^ 


'I 


BL  530  .R68  1900     ^^^^ 
Royce,  Josiah,  1855-1916 
The  conception  of 
immortality 


tl)f  JlngersoU  JLftture,  t899 

THE  CONCEPTION  OF 
IMMORTALITY 


BY 


JOSIAH   ROYCE 

PROFESSOR   OF  THE   HISTORY   OF   PHILOSOPHY 

AT    HARVARD    UNIVERSITY 

AND  INGERSOLL   LECTURER   FOR   1899 


gcKftergverePregjI 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

(Cfee  0itierj^De  ^wj^i^,  Cambridge 

1900 


COPYRIGHT,   1900,   BY  JOSIAH   ROYCE 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


TO 

K.  R. 

I   DEDICATE  THIS   BOOK 


THE   INGERSOLL  LECTURESHIP 


Extract  from  the  will  of  Miss  Caroline  Haskell  higersolL 

-who  died  in  Kecne,  County  of  Cheshire^  New 

Hampshire,  Jan.  26,  18 gj. 

First.     In   carrying  out  the  wishes  of  my  late 
beloved   father,    George   Goldthwait   Ingersoll,   as 
declared  by  him  in   his  last  will  and  testament,  I 
give  and  bequeath  to  Harvard  University  in  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.,  where  my  late  father  was  graduated, 
and  which  he  always  held  in  love  and  honor,  the 
sum  of  Five  thousand  dollars  ($5,000)  as  a  fund  for 
the  establishment  of  a  Lectureship  on  a  plan  some- 
what similar  to  that  of  the  Dudleian  lecture,  that  is 
—  one  lecture  to  be  delivered  each  year,  on  any  con- 
venient day  between  the  last  day  of  May  and  the 
first  day  of  December,  on  this  subject,  "the  Im- 
mortality of  Man,"  said  lecture  not  to  form  a  part 
of  the  usual  college  course,  nor  to  be  dehvered  by 
any  Professor  or  Tutor  as  part  of  his  usual  routine 
of  instruction,  though  any  such  Professor  or  Tutor 
may  be  appointed  to  such  service.     The  choice  of 
said  lecturer  is  not  to  be  limited  to  any  one  religious 
denomination,  nor  to  any  one  profession,  but  may 
be  that  of  either  clergyman  or  layman,  the  appoint- 
ment to  take  place  at  least  six  months  before  the 
delivery  of  said  lecture.     The   above  sum   to   be 
safely  invested  and  three  fourths  of  the  annual  in- 
terest  thereof  to   be   paid  to  the   lecturer  for  his 
services  and  the  remaining  fourth  to  be  expended 
in  the  publishment  and  gratuitous  distribution  of 
the  lecture,  a  copy  of  which  is  always  to  be  fur- 
nished by  the  lecturer  for  such  purpose.     The  same 
lecture  to  be  named  and  known  as  '<  the  Ingersoll 
lecture  on  the  Immortality  of  Man." 


THE    CONCEPTION    OF 
IMMORTALITY 


MAY  as  well  begin  this  discus- 
sion by  pointing  out  where,  to  my 
mind,  lies  the  most  central  pro- 
blem concerning  man's  immortality.  In 
the  real  world  in  which  our  common-sense 
metaphysic  believes,  some  things  are  obvi- 
ously transient,  and  others,  as,  for  instance, 
matter  and  the  laws  of  nature,  are  more 
enduring,  and  perhaps  (so  common  sense 
would  nowadays  tell  us),  are  absolutely 
permanent.  But  permanence  is  of  two 
sorts.  A  type  may  be  permanent,  —  a  law, 
a  relationship.  Thus  the  Binomial  Theo- 
rem remains  always  true ;  and  water  con- 
tinues to  run  down  hill  just  as  it  did  dur- 
ing the  earliest  geological  periods.     Or 


2         Tlje  Conception  of  Immortality 

that  may  be  permanent  which  we  usually 
call  an  individual  being.  This  particle  of 
matter,  as,  for  instance,  an  individual  atom, 
or  again,  the  individual  whole  called  the 
entire  mass  of  matter  of  the  universe,  may 
be  permanent.  Now  when  we  ask  about 
the  Immortality  of  Man,  it  is  the  perma- 
nence of  the  Individual  Man  concerning 
which  we  mean  to  inquire,  and  not  pri- 
marily the  permanence  of  the  human  type, 
as  such,  nor  the  permanence  of  any  other 
system  of  laws  or  relationships.  So  far 
then,  as  to  the  mere  statement  of  our 
issue,  I  suppose  that  we  are  all  agreed. 

But  in  philosophy  we  who  study  any  of 
these  fundamental  problems  are  unwilling 
to  assert  anything  about  a  given  subject, 
unless  we  first  understand  what  we  mean 
by  that  subject.  Philosophy  turns  alto- 
gether upon  trying  to  find  out  what  our 
various  fundamental  ideas  mean.  Thus, 
when  in  practical  life,  you  act  dutifully,  you 
may  not  be  wholly  clear  as  to  just  what  you 
mean  by  your  duty ;  but  when  you  study 


A 


.  The  Conception  of  Immortality         5 

Moral  Philosophy,  your  primal  question  is, 
What  does  the  very  Idea  of  Duty  mean  ? 
Now  precisely  so,  in  case  of  the  Immor- 
tality of  the  Individual  Man,  the  question 
arises,  What  do  we  mean  when  we  talk  of 
an  individual  man  at  all  ?  But  this  ques- 
tion, to  my  mind,  is  not  a  mere  preliminary 
to  an  inquiry  concerning  immortality,  but 
it  includes  by  far  the  larger  part  of  just 
that  inquiry  itself.  For  unless  we  know 
what  an  individual  man  is,  we  have  no  busi- 
ness even  to  raise  the  question  whether  he 
is  immortal.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  if 
we  can  discover  what  we  mean  by  an  indi- 
vidual man,  the  very  answer  to  that  ques- 
tion will  take  us  so  far  into  the  heart  of 
things,  and  will  imply  so  much  as  to  our 
views  about  God,  the  World,  and  Man's 
place  in  the  world,  that  the  question  about 
the  immortality  of  man  will  become,  in 
great  measure,  a  mere  incident  in  the 
course  of  this  deeper  discussion. 

Accordingly,  I  shall  here  raise,  and  for 
the  larger  part  of  this  lecture  shall  pursue, 


4         The  Conception  of  Immortality 

an  inquiry  concerning  what  we  mean  by  an 
Individual  Man.  Only  towards  the  end  of 
this  discussion  shall  we  come  clearly  to  see 
that  in  defining  the  Individual  Man,  we 
have  indeed  been  defining  his  Immortality. 
The  question  as  to  the  nature  of  an  indi- 
vidual man  is  at  once  a  problem  of  logic 
and  an  issue  of  life.  I  shall  have  to  con- 
sider the  matter  in  both  aspects.  In  the 
first  aspect  our  question  becomes  identical 
with  the  problem,  What  is  it  that  makes 
mty  real  being  an  individual }  This  ques- 
tion is  a  very  ancient,  and  if  you  choose 
commonplace  one,  which  has  been  studied 
from  time  to  time  ever  since  Aristotle.  I 
can  give  you  small  insight,  in  my  brief 
time,  into  its  complications  ;  and  what  I 
needs  must  say  about  it  may  appear  very 
formal  and  dreary.  But  like  all  the  cen- 
tral problems  of  Logic,  this  one  really 
pulsates  with  all  the  mystery  of  life ;  and 
before  I  am  done,  I  shall  hope  to  give  you  a 
glimpse  of  the  sense  in  which  this  is  true. 
Such  a  glimpse  will  become  possible  as 


The  Conception  of  Immortality         5 

soon  as  I  apply  the  logical  question  about 
individuals  to  the  case  of  the  individual 
man.  That  all  men  including  yourself  are 
more  or  less  mysterious  beings  to  you,  you 
are  already  aware.  What  I  want  to  show 
you  is  that  the  chief  mystery  about  any 
man  is  precisely  the  mystery  of  his  indi- 
vidual nature,  i.  e.,  of  the  nature  whereby 
he  is  this  man  and  no  other  man.  I  want 
to  show  you  that  the  only  solution  of  this 
mystery  lies  in  conceiving  every  man  as  so 
related  to  the  world  and  to  the  very  life  of 
God,  that  in  order  to  be  an  individual  at 
all  a  man  has  to  be  very  much  nearer  to 
the  Eternal  than  in  our  present  life  we  are 
accustomed  to  observe.  So  much  then  for 
an  outline  of  our  enterprise.  And  now  for 
its  inevitably  complicated  details.^ 


II 


E  all  naturally  believe  that  the  real 
world  about  us  contains  individ- 
ual things.  And  if  you  ask  what 
we  naturally  mean  by  believing  this,  I 
first  reply,  apart  from  any  more  formal 
definition  of  individuality,  by  saying  that 
we  believe  our  world  to  consist  of  facts, 
of  realities,  which  are  all  ultimately  dif- 
ferent from  one  another,  and  unlike  one 
another,  by  virtue  of  precisely  what  con- 
stitutes their  very  existence  as  facts  or  as 
realities.  Things  may  resemble  one  an- 
other as  much  as  you  will.  But  deeper 
than  their  resemblance  has  to  be,  accord- 
ing to  our  common-sense  view,  the  fact 
that  they  are  still  somehow  individually 
or  numerically  different  beings.  Yonder 
lights,  for  instance,  are  in  your  present 
opinion  all  of  them  different  from  one  an- 


The  Conception  of  Immortality         7 

other,  despite  their  resemblances  as  lumi- 
nous objects.  You  and  your  neighbors 
are  different  beings.  And  such  individual 
difference,  as  you  hold,  enters  very  deeply 
into  your  inmost  constitution,  or  into  the 
constitution  of  any  person  or  thing  in  the 
universe.  No  matter  how  much  two  peo- 
ple, say  twins,  look  alike,  talk  alike,  think 
alike,  or  feel  alike,  we  still  hold  that  they 
are  different  beings ;  and  we  naturally  hold 
that  this  difference  lies  somehow  deeper 
than  do  all  their  resemblances,  inner  or 
outer.  For  that  each  one  of  them  is,  or 
that  he  is  this  being,  depends  upon  and 
implies  the  fact  that  he  is  nobody  else; 
and  just  as  neither  of  the  twins  could  have 
any  appearance,  or  voice,  or  thoughts,  or 
feelings  at  all  unless  he  first  existed ;  just 
so,  too,  neither  of  them,  as  the  individual 
that  he  is,  could  exist  at  all  unless  he  were 
this  person,  and  7tot  the  other.     So  that  to 

(exist  implies,  as  we  usually  hold,  to  be  dif- 
ferent from  the  rest  of  the  world  of  exist- 
ences.   And  since  I  must  exist  if  I  am  to 


8  The  Conception  of  Immortality 

have  any  qualities  whereby  I  can  resemble 
another  being,  and  must  differ  trom  all 
other  beings  if  I  am  to  exist,  it  naturally 
seems  that  my  difference  from  all  the  rest 
of  the  world  is,  in  a  sense,  the  deepest 
truth  about  me.  However  little  I  may 
know  about  myself,  common  sense  there- 
fore supposes  me  to  be  at  least  very  sure 
that  I  am  nobody  else,  and  so  am  different 
from  anybody  else. 

By  an  individual,  then,  we  mean  an 
essentially  unique  being,  or  a  being  such 
that  there  exists,  and  can  exist,  but  one 
of  the  type  constituted  by  this  individual 


bein 

An  easy  task  it  is  then,  although  indeed 
a  very  dry  and  abstract  task,  to  tell  what  in 
general  constitutes  individtcality,  if  we  take 
the  term  simply  as  an  abstract  noun.  For 
the  beings  of  the  world  are  made  individ- 
uals by  whatever  truly  serves  to  distinguish 
each  of  them  from  all  the  rest,  to  keep 
them,  as  it  were,  seemingly  apart  in  their 
Being.     But  now,  if  we  leave  this  barely 


The  Conception  of  Immortality         9 

abstract  statement,  and  come  closer  to  the 
facts  of  life,  I  may  next  point  out  that,  i£» 
individuality  in  general  is  easily  defined, 
this  hidividiialy  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is 
an  unique  being,  is  from  the  nature  of 
the  case  peculiarly  hard  to  characterize,  or 
to  explain,  or  to  conceive,  or  to  define, 
or  to  observe,  or  in  any  other  way  to  know. 
In  fact,  when  we  look  closer  we  soon  see 
that  our  human  thought  is  able  to  define 
only  types  of  beings,  and  never  individuals, 
so  that  tJds  individual  is  always  for  us  in- 
definable. On  the  other  hand  our  human 
sense  experience  shows  us  only  kinds  of 
sensory  impressions,  and  never  unique  ob- 
jects as  unique. 

For  now  there  comes  to  our  attention 
a  very  commonplace,  but  important  fact, 
regarding  the  process  of  our  knowledge. 
We  have  so  far  accepted  the  natural  view 
that  the  differences  of  various  existent 
things  lie  at  the  basis,  so  to  speak,  of  all 
resemblances.  But  whenever  we  know 
anything,  we  are  dependent  upon  taking 


lo        TJje  Conception  of  Immortality 

account  at  once,  and  in  one  act,  of  both 
likenesses  and  differences.  These  two 
aspects  of  facts  are  somewhat  differently 
related  to  our  consciousness  ;  but  we  never 
really  come  to  know  a  difference  without 
in  some  wise  either  reducing  to  or  con- 
sciously relating  it  to  a  likeness.  One  of 
the  lights  that  you  see  differs,  to  your 
mind,  from  another  light  in  size,  in  bright- 
ness, or  in  place.  Yet  just  because  you 
see  them  thus  differing,  all  of  them  for 
that  very  reason  are  seen  as  in  the  same 
larger  place,  viz.,  in  this  room,  or  as  alike 
in  all  being  bright,  or  as  alike  in  all  hav- 
ing size.  Thus,  whenever  you  clearly  see 
wherein  they  are  different,  say  in  bright- 
ness, size,  place,  you  also  see  how,  in  just 
this  same  respect  in  which  they  differ, 
they  also  have  some  resemblances  to  one 
another.  This  fact,  that  you  always  know 
likenesses  and  differences  at  once,  or  in 
one  act,  makes  it  impossible  to  sift  out 
in  your  knowledge  all  the  resemblances  of 
your  world,  and  to  put  them  in  one  place 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       1 1 

by  themselves,  in  your  mind,  while  you 
put  all  the  differences  in  another  place. 
For  the  likenesses  stick  to  the  differences, 
and  always  come  away  with  them,  when 
you  try  to  analyze  your  world,  even  in  the 
most  abstract  thinking  process.  Just  as 
some  of  the  miner's  gold  washes  away  in 
the  tailings,  and  just  as  some  of  the  ac- 
companying substances  that  a  chemist  tries 
to  remove  by  a  particular  process  of  dis- 
tillation may  distill  over  with  whatever 
was  to  be  separated  from  them,  so  too, 
when,  in  your  discriminating  observation, 
or  in  your  abstract  thinking,  you  try,  for 
the  purposes  of  your  analysis,  to  wash  the 
resemblances  out  of  the  facts,  and  to  keep 
the  differences,  or  to  distill  off  the  indi- 
viduality of  the  different  things,  you  find 
that  always  resemblance  stubbornly  clings 
to  difference,  and  vice  versa.  Nor  do  our 
figures  of  the  tailings  and  the  distillations 
give  quite  an  adequate  idea  of  the  actual 
hopelessness  of  trying  to  separate  in  our 
consciousness,  for  purposes  of  analysis,  the 


t2       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

like  and  the  different  aspects  of  our  ob- 
served world.  For,  in  our  knowledge,  the 
consciousness  of  likeness  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  difference  help  each  other ; 
and  therefore  in  a  measure,  it  is  true  that 
the  more  we  get  of  one  of  them,  before  our 
knowledge,  the  more  we  get  of  the  other. 
So  they  decline  altogether  to  be  known 
separately.  Thus,  only  pretty  closely  sim- 
ilar objects  can  seem  to  us  to  stand,  from 
our  point  of  view,  in  an  observably  sharp 
,  •  contrast  to  one  another.     We  can  see  the  \ 

i  contrast  only  when  we  also  see  the  close? 

(.similarity.    For  instance,  it  is  much  easier/ 
to  be  aware  of  a  definite  difference  or  con- 
trast between  two  poets  than  it  is  to  be 
[conscious  of  the  difference  or  contrast  be- 
/tween  a  poet  and  a  blackberry  or  a  para- 
Dola.     Whenever  we  clearly  see  what  a 
difference  is,  there  we  also  observe  a  like- 
ness, and  the  difference  and  the  likeness, 
as  seen,  always  relate  to  the  same  aspects 
of  the  objects. 
This  being  the  fashion  of  our  know- 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       13 

ledge,  one  sees  at  once  how  hard  it  must 
be  for  knowledge  either  to  find  in  the  im- 
pressions of  sense,  or  to  define  by  thought, 
just  wherein  one  thing  ultimately  differs 
from  all  other  things.    An  individual  being, 
as  we  have  seen,  is  thought  by  our  common 
sense  to  be,  first  of  all,  different  from  any 
other  being.     We  try  either  to  say  or  to 
see  wherein  it  thus  differs,  or  what  consti- 
tutes its  individuality.     Forthwith  we  only 
the  more  clearly  see  and  state  and  conceive 
points  wherein  it  not  only  differs  from  all 
other  objects,  but  also,  and  at  the  same 
time,  resembles  them.     This  is  the  fate  of 
our  knowing  process,  and  therefore,  when- 
ever we  observe  closely,  all  individuality 
seems  to  be  conceived  and  observed  by  us 
as  merely  relative.    Individuality  is  known 
to  ,us  only  as  an  aspect  inseparable  from 
what  is  not  individuality.    But  just  because 
a  thing,  according  to  our  natural  view,  is  to 
be  an  individual  to  the  very  heart  and  core 
of  its  existence,  it  seems  that,  if  we  are  to  be 
able  to  see  or  to  express  this  individuality, 


14        Tlje  Conception  of  Immortality 

we  ought  somewhere  to  be  able  to  find  or 
to  conceive  the  individuality  of  each  thing 
as  a  fact  by  itself,  —  as  a  difference,  deeper 
than  all  resemblances,  ideally  separable 
from  them,  and  not  merely  bound  up  in 
this  inseparable  way  with  them,  or  depend- 
ent upon  them.  Hence  we  always  fail 
when  we  try  to  describe  any  individual 
exhaustively. 

Moreover,   still   another   aspect   of   our 
difficulty  often  occurs  to  our  minds,  and  is 
especially  baffling.     Anything  is  an  indi- 
vidual in  so  far  as  it  genuinely  differs  not 
only  from   any  other  existent   being,  but 
from  any  other  being   that   is   genuinely 
possible   or    that    is   rightly   conceivable. 
You,  for  instance,  if  you  are  a  real  individ- 
ual, are   such   that   nobody  else,  whether 
actual  or  possible,  could  ever  share  your 
individual  nature,  or  be  rightly  confounded 
with  you.     Now,  however  closely  we  ob- 
serve, and  no  matter  how  carefully  we  con- 
'   ceive,  a  thing,  we  at  best  only  observe„.i5r 
I    conceive  actual  likenesses  and  differences 


^ 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       75 

between  this  thing  and  other  present  or 
remembered  things.  We  can  never  either 
see  or  abstractly  think  just  how  or  why 
it  is  that  no  other  possible  thing  could 
possess  the  characters,  whatever  they 
are,  which  we  have  once  noticed  or  have 
actually  found  this  thing  to  possess.  Sup- 
pose, for  instance,  that  I  see  the  color  of 
an  object.  So  far  I  in  no  sense  see  why 
other  objects  might  not  possess  just  that 
color.  In  general  other  objects  do.  So 
colors  are  not  purely  individual  characteris- 
tics of  things.  Suppose,  however,  that  I 
see  a  hundred  autumn  leaves,  and  sorting 
them,  find  indeed  that  no  two  of  them  are 
precisely  alike  in  shading  and  in  detail  of 
coloring.  In  that  case  I  at  first  seem  to 
be  finding  what  is  individual  in  each  leaf. 
But  no.  For  so  far  I  have  only  seen  ac- 
tual likenesses  and  differences ;  and  so  far 
only  my  present  autumn  leaves  are  indeed 
seen  to  be  different.  But  I  have  not  seen 
why  there  might  not  be  in  the  world,  un- 
seen as  yet  by  me,  other  autumn  leaves 


1 6       The  Conception  of  Immortality 
precisely  like  any  particular  one  of  these 
leaves  in  every  detail  of  coloring   that  I 
have  noticed.    Hence  I  have  not  yet  taken 
note,  in   any  leaf,  of  a  coloring   such  as 
could  not  possibly  be  repeated  somewhere 
else  in  the  forest ;  and  the^ef ore  I   have 
not  yet  actually  observed  what  it  is  that 
constitutes  the  truly  individual  existence 
of  any  one  of  the  leaves.     For  whatever  is 
a  truly  individual  character  of  any  existent 
thing  is  a  character  that  simply  could  not 
be  shared  by  another  thing  ;  and  whatever 
makes  you   an   existent   individual   being 
forbids   anybody   else,  whether   actual   or 
I  possible,  to  be  possessed  of  precisely  your 
1 1  individual  characteristics. 

Historians  and  biographers  try  to  tell  us 
about  individuals.  Do  they  ever  actually 
succeed  in  getting  before  us  the  adequate 
description  of  any  one  individual  as  such  ? 
No.  Man  you  can  define  ;  but  the  true 
essence  of  any  man,  say,  for  instance,  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  remains  the  endlessly 
elusive  and  mysterious  object  of  the  bio- 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       ly 

grapher's  interest,  of  the  historian's  com- 
ments, of  popular  legend,  and  of  patriotic 
devotion.  There  is  no  adequate  definition 
or  description  of  Abraham  Lincoln  just  in 
so  far  as  he  was  the  unique  individual. 
And  why,  I  once  more  ask,  is  this  so } 

J'Why  can  you  not  tell  all  that  constitutes  ,. 

I  the  individual  what  he  is  .?  One  answer,  I  v 
insist,  lies  just  here.  Suppose  that  you 
had  overcome  all  the  other  limitations  that 
hinder  the  biographer  or  the  historian 
from  knowing  the  facts  about  his  hero. 
Suppose  that  you  had  a  description  or 
definition  say  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  and 
suppose  you  assumed  this  definition  or 
description  to  be  an  exact  and  exhaustive 
one.  The  definition  would  mention,  per- 
haps, the  physical  appearance  and  bearing 
of  Lincoln,  the  traits  of  his  character,  the 
secrets  of  his  success,  and  whatever  else 
you  may  choose  to  regard  as  characteristic 
of  him.  Well,  suppose  the  definition  fin- 
ished. The  question  might  be  raised,  at 
once.    Is    it    possible,   is    it   conceivable. 


\ 


1 8        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

that  the  world  should  contain  another  man 
who  embodied  just  that  now  defined  type, 
—  who  looked,  spoke,  thought,  felt,  com- 
manded, and  succeeded  as  Lincoln  the 
War  President  did  ?  If  you  answer, 
"  No  ;"  then  we  may  at  once  retort,  How 
can  you  know  that  only  one  man  of  this  or 
of  any  once  defined  type  can  exist  ?  Have 
.  you  the  secret  of  creation  ?  Is  every  man's  / 
»^.^  mould  shattered  (to  use  the  familiar  meta-  T 
phor)  when  the  man  is  made  ?  And  if  so,  J 
how  come  you  to  be  aware  of  the  fact  ? 
But  if  you  answer,  *'  Yes ;  more  than  one 
man  of  this  defined  type  is  at  least  possi- 
ble, or  conceivable  ; "  then  equally  well 
we  may  point  out  that  hereby  you  merely 
admit  that  you  have  not  yet  defined  what 
makes  Abraham  Lincoln  different  from 
any  and  from  all  other  men,  actual  or  pos- 
sible. For  if  the  possible  men,  fashioned 
after  the  likeness  that  your  definition  has 
expounded,  were  to  come  into  existence, 
no  one  of  these  other  men  would  be,  in 
your  opinion,  Abraham  Lincoln  himself,  or 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       /p 

be  entitled  to  his  honors  or  his  merits. 
They  would  differ  from  him  by  precisely 
the  whole  breadth  of  their  individuality. 
They  would  have  no  right  to  his  property, 
no  share  in  his  individual  fame,  and  no 
hope,  so  to  speak,  of  becoming  worthy  to 
take  his  place  upon  the  Judgment  Day. 
Yet,  by  hypothesis,  they  would  conform  to 
whatever  definition  of  him  you  had  once 
given  as  an  adequate  characterization  of 
his  type. 

You  may  here  interpose,  if  you  will,  by 
saying  that  all  such  idle  suppositions  about 
the  possible  reduplications  of  the  type  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  are  worthless,  since  the 
practically  interesting  question  is  whether 
men  whose  identity  runs  any  risk  of  being 
confounded  with  that  of  the  great  Presi- 
dent exist  or  are  to  be  found ;  and  this 
question,  according  to  our  common  view, 
is  easily  to  be  answered  in  the  negative. 
But  my  present  interest,  in  mentioning 
the  possible  cases  of  other  representatives 
of  Lincoln's  once  defined  type,  lies  merely 


20        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

in  showing  that  whatever  the  individual- 
ity of  anything  really  is,  we  men  never 
adequately  come  to  know  wherein  it  con- 
sists, and  so  I  here  point  out  that  while 
you  are  doubtless  somehow  quite  sure  of 
Lincoln's  individuality,  of  his  unexampled 
uniqueness,  you  have  not  positively  de- 
fined wherein  that  uniqueness  and  indivi- 
duality consists,  until  your  definition  has 
actually  expressed  why,  or  at  least  how  it 
is  that  there  ca7i  be  no  other  man  of  his 
type.  So  long  as  you  merely  appeal  then 
to  human  experience  to  show  that  there  is 
no  other  such  man  to  be  found,  our  present 
argument  remains  untouched. 

But  even  if  we  passed  back  again  to 
experience  to  help  us,  we  should  still  find 
once  more,  as  we  found  in  case  of  the  au- 
tumn leaves,  that  no  experience  can  show 
us  the  unique.  The  facts  of  sense  are 
essentially  sorts  of  experience,  —  charac- 
ters, types,  —  fashions  of  feelings.  Unique-'^ 
(  ness  as  such  is  thus  precisely  what  I  can\ 
l^never  directly  find  present  to  my  senses.  ^ 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       2i 

When  you  first  learn  from  the  logic  text- 
books or  from  Aristotle  that  the  individual 
is  the  indefinable,  you  are  indeed  fain  with 
Aristotle  to  turn  back  to  experience,  as  we 
just  attempted  to  do  in  case  of  Abraham 
Lincoln.  You  are  disposed  to  say  that 
the  individual  is  the  proper  object  of  sense. 
But  Aristotle  himself  knew  better  than  to 
rest  content  in  this  view.  As  he  already 
saw,  si^isg,  also,  in  its  own  way,  brijxgs  to 
1  our  consciousness  only  the  more  or  less 
'  vaguely  general,  or  at  best  the  typical,  — 
not  the  unique.^ 

The  very  young  children  trust  their 
senses  for  guidance,  in  the  use  of  their 
earliest  language  at  the  time  when  they 
name  every  object  by  its  vaguely  observed 
type.  So,  perhaps,  they  name  all  men 
alike  ''papa,'*  or  for  a  while  they  call  all 
animals  **  dogs,"  or  identify  cows  as  "  cats," 
or  use  any  other  of  the  delightful  confu- 
sions that  characterize  the  first  year  of 
speech.  Sense  and  feeling,  taken  as  di- 
rectly present  experience,  supply  us  only 


22       Tlje  Conception  of  Immortality 

with  general  types,  and,  apart  from  other 
motives,  guide  us  only  to  general  ideas, 
never  to  a  direct  knowledge  of  individuals. 
You  see  then,  in  sum,  that  our  human 
type  of  knowledge  never  shows  us  exist- 
ent individuals  as  being  truly  individual. 
Sense,  taken  by  itself,  shows  us  merely 
sense  qualities,  —  colors,  sounds,  odors, 
tastes.  These  are  general  characters. 
Abstract  thinking  defines  for  us  types. 
A  discriminating  comparison  of  many  pre- 
sent objects  of  experience,  such  as  autumn 
leaves,  or  human  faces,  or  handwritings, 
shows  us  manifold  differences,  but  always 
along  with  and  subject  to  the  presence  of 
likenesses,  so  that  we  never  find  what  com- 
mon sense  assumes  to  exist,  namely,  such 
a  difference  between  any  individual  and  all 
the  rest  of  the  world  as  lies  deeper  than 
every  resemblance.  And  even  if  by  com- 
parisons and  discriminations  we  had  found 
how  one  being  appears  to  differ  from  all 
other  now  existent  beings,  we  should  not 
yet  have  seen  what  it  is  that  distinguishes 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       2^ 

each  individual  being  from  all  possible 
beings.  Yet  such  a  difference  from  all 
possible  beings  is  presupposed  when  you 
talk,  for  instance,  of  your  own  individual- 
ity. 


Ill 


ET  us  now,  however,  pass  to  a  new 
aspect  of  the  matter.  If  indeed 
it  is  true  that  you  do  not  define 
in  your  thought,  or  empirically  observe 
through  any  direct  experience  of  your 
senses,  that  the  world  consists  of  unique 
individual  beings,  then  we  are  next  dis- 
posed to  say  that  the  dogma  of  common 
sense  upon  this  subject  is  the  result  of 
some  very  recondite  interpretation  of  your 
experience.  But  if  we  ask  whence  we 
came  by  this  interpretation,  I  must  call 
your  attention  to  that  region  of  your  life 
where  you  are  indeed  surest  of  the  indi- 
viduality of  the  facts,  and  most  familiar 
with  its  meaning.  This  region  is  that  of 
your  intimate  human  relationships.  Your 
family  and  your  nearest  friends  are  in- 
deed  for   your   human   faith   and   loyalty 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       25 

through  and  through  individuals.  You  are 
sure  of  their  uniqueness.  You  resist  most 
decidedly  the  hypothesis  that  what  for  you 
constitutes  the  essence  of  their  individual- 
ity could  conceivably  be  shared,  like  the 
characters  of  a  mere  type,  by  other  beings 
in  the  world.  "There  is  no  other  child 
quite  like  my  child,  —  no  other  love  quite 
like  my  love,  —  no  other  friend  wholly  like 
this  friend,  —  no  other  home  the  precise 
possible  substitute  for  this  home  "  —  how 
familiar  and  human  such  assertions  are. 
Now  this  affirmation  of  the  uniqueness 
of  our  own,  and  of  those  to  whom  our 
hearts  belong,  has  something  about  it  that 
obviously  goes  beyond  both  sense  and 
abstract  thinking.  It  expresses  itself 
in  quite  absolute  terms.  Meanwhile  it 
is  much  warmer  and  more  vital  than  the 
before-mentioned  colorless  assumption  that 
all  the  real  beings  in  the  world  are  in  some 
wise  unique  beings,  or  that  the  universe  is 
made  up  of  individuals.  Yet  this  present 
and  more  vital  assertion  seems  to  express 


26       TJje  Conception  of  Immortality 

the  very  inmost  spirit  of  intimacy  of  per- 
sonal loyalty.  And  meanwhile  it  is,  in  its 
implications,  quite  as  metaphysical  as  is 
the  most  general  theory  of  any  philosopher. 
For  I  must  still  insist,  —  not  even  in  case 
of  our  most  trusted  friends,  —  not  even 
after  years  of  closest  intimacy,  —  no,  not 
even  in  the  instance  of  Being  that  lies 
nearest  to  each  one  of  us,  —  not  even  in 
the  consciousness  that  each  one  of  us  has 
of  his  own  Self,  —  can  we  men  as  we  now 
are  either  define  in  thought  or  find  directly 
presented  in  our  experience  the  individual 
beings  whom  we  most  of  all  love  and  trust, 
or  most  of  all  presuppose  and  regard,  as 

! somehow  certainly  real.  For  even  withm 
the  circle  of  your  closest  intimacies  our  | 
former  rule  holds  true,  that,  if  you  attempt 
to  define  by  your  thought  the  unique,  it 
transforms  itself  into  an  unsatisfactory  ab-y 
straction,  —  a  type  and  not  a  person,  —  a 
mere  fashion  of  possible  existence,  that 
might  as  well  be  shared  by  a  legion  as  con- 
fined to  the  case  of  a  single  being.    And 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       27 

just  so,  too,  the  other  previous  result  ob- 
tains, namely,  that  when  you  try  to  find  the 
certainly  unique  even  in  your  own  house- 
hold, it  eludes  your  direct  observation,  for  it 
is  a  form  of  Being  that  belongs  to  a  far  higher 
sphere  than  that  of  any  merely  immediate 
experience.     It  is  just  for  this  reason  that 
the  individual  object  of  your  oldest  friend- 
ship is  not  merely  a  psychological  problem 
to  you,  but  also  a  metaphysical  mystery.^ 
The  real  presence  of  your  friend  you  may 
indeed  love  with  an  exclusive  affection  that 
forbids  you  to  believe  that  any  other  could 
take   his  unique   place  anywhere  in   the 
whole  realm  of  Being ;  but  you  meet  this 
real  presence  of  an  individual  never  at  any 
time  as  a  fact  of   sense.     Your   doctrine 
about  this  real  presence  of  your  friend  re- 
mains in  common  life  a  dogma  just  as  truly 
as   if  it  were  a  dogma  of  a  supernatural 
faith.     It  is  with  the   individual  of   daily 
life  as  with  the  lady  of  Browning's  lyric, 
for    whom    the    lover    searches    throuo:h 
"room   after   room"   of    the  house  they 
*'  inhabit  together  : "  — 


K 


28       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

"  Yet  the  day  wears, 
And  door  succeeds  door ; 
I  try  the  fresh  fortune  — 

Range  the  wide  house  from  the  wing  to  the  centre  — 
Still  the  same  chance  !     She  goes  out  as  I  enter  ! " 

And  now,  if  you  ask  why  this  lady  is  thus 
elusive,  I  answer,  because  she  is  an  indi- 
^vidual.     And  an  individual  is  a  being  that) 
"4 no  finite  search  can  find.  J 

'  As  for  yourself,  you  notoriously  are  such 
that  the  Self  is,  and  is  a  real  individual. 
But  who  amongst  us  defines  by  his  abstract 
statement  of  his  own  type,  or  finds  by 
dwelling  upon  his  familiar  masses  of  mere 
organic  sensation,  what  his  own  unique 
Self  may  be  ?  Or  who  amongst  us  con- 
ceives himself  in  his  uniqueness  except  as 
the  remote  goal  of  some  ideal  process  of 
coming  to  himself  and  of  awakening  to  the 
truth  about  his  own  life  .?  Only  an  infinite 
process  can  show  me  who  I  am. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  we  dwell  upon 
these  cases  that  lie  nearest  to  our  vital  in- 
terests, we  do  indeed  begin  to  find  out  the 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       29 

deeper  meaning  of  something  that  in  the 
instances  formerly  mentioned  seemed  to 
be  a  matter  for  cold  and  curious  logical 
inquiry.  We  begin  to  find  out,  namely, 
the  deeper  meaning  of  this  our  so  fixed, 
and  yet  at  first  sight  so  arbitrary  assump- 
tion that  our  real  world,  despite  the  imper- 
fections of  our  conception  and  the  vague 
generality  of  our  direct  experience,  does 
consist  of  individuals.  For  in  case  of  the 
objects  of  our  nearer  and  of  our  more  con- 
sciously exclusive  affections,  we  are  often 
well  aware  how  arbitrary  our  mere  speech 
about  the  experienced  or  defined  unique- 
ness of  these  objects  of  affection  must 
seem  to  any  external  observer.  We  rec- 
ognize this  apparent  arbitrariness  of  our 
description  of  the  unique  object  ;  but  we 
even  glory  therein.  We  confess  that  we  can- 
not tell  wherein  our  friend  is  so  individual. 
We  emphasize  the  confession.  We  make  it 
a  deliberate  topic  of  portrayal  in  art.  And 
what  we  feel,  as  we  do  this,  is  that  this  ar- 
bitrary speech  of  ours  is  a  sign  that  we  are 


^o       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

pursuing  a  very  precious  secret,  which  no- 
body else  has  the  right  to  share.  Herein  we 
find  a  hint  also  of  a  certain  ideal  view  of  the 
innermost  nature  of  Being,  —  a  view  which 
simply  cannot  be  translated  into  the  lan- 
guage of  abstract  description,  or  adequately 
embodied  in  the  materials  of  present  sensa- 
tion ;  but  a  view  which  is  all  the  truer  for 
that  very  reason.  For  this  view  the  Real 
is  indeed  something  beyond  our  present 
human  sense  and  our  descriptive  science. 
^The  individuals  are,  as  we  are  sure,  the  ) 
I  most  real  facts  of  our  world.  But  yet  there  j 
is  for  us,  as  for  Browning's  lover,  something 
endlessly  fascinating  about  our  hopeless 
human  inability  to  show  to  anybody  else, 
or  to  verify  by  even  our  own  irnmediate  ex- 
perience, just  in  what  way  they  are  thus  so 
.  individual.  This  our  finite  situation  has 
its  own  perplexing  and  beautiful  irony. 
We  rise  above  our  helplessness  even  as  we 
confess  it ;  for  this  helplessness  hints  to  us 
that  our  real  world  is  behind  the  veil. 
The   inner  nature,   the  true    Being  of 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       ^i 

these  beloved  individuals  about  us  and  of 
our  own  individuality  within,  thus  consti- 
tutes, so  to  speak,  the  genuinely  and  whole- 
somely occult  aspect  of  our  most  common- 
place life.  That  we  are  really  in  the  most 
intimate  relations  with  this  so  familiar,  and 
precious,  and  yet  so  occult  world,  where  in 
truth  our  most  intimate  friends  and  our 
actual  selves  even  now  dwell,  we  are  sure. 
But  that  the  gates  seem  barred  whenever 
we  try  to  penetrate  or  to  reveal  the  truth 
of  this  very  world,  —  this  is  something  so 
baffling,  so  stimulating,  and  yet  in  a  way 
so  absurd,  that  in  our  lighter  moments  we 
find  our  own  incapacity  to  make  our  world 
manifest  to  our  human  vision  endlessly 
amusing.  And  the  play  with  these  myste- 
ries constitutes  a  great  part  of  the  poetic 

'  arts.    It  is,  I  must  insist,  merely  a  concrete  j 
instance  of  the  fundamental   logical   andt 

',  metaphysical  problem:  as  to  how  the  world  1 

:  can  consist  of  individuals. 

To  mention  a  familiar  instance.    All  the 
world  loves  a  lover,  and,  in  a  sense,  loves 


^2        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

in  sympathy  with  him.  Yet  nearly  all  the 
faithful  lovers  are  certain  profoundly  to 
disagree  with  him  as  to  the  most  central 
article  of  his  faith.  For  he  loves  an  indi- 
vidual, unique,  without  a  peer,  —  one  who 
is  most  lovable  just  because  she  occupies 
a  place  that  no  other  could  take.  They, 
—  the  other  faithful  lovers,  —  each  one  of 
them  also  loves  a  peerless  individual.  And 
therefore  they  all  have  to  use  indeed  very 
nearly  the  same  formulas  whenever  they 
try  to  tell  why  they  love.  But  they  all 
disagree,  just  because  they  apply  their 
creeds  to  different  objects.  They  all  de- 
scribe essentially  the  same  type,  namely, 
the  perfect  woman.  They  differ  about  her 
identity.  Or  if  they  do  not  thus  disagree  — 
then,  to  be  sure,  a  tragedy  is  in  the  mak- 
ing. In  the  endless  disagreement  of  the 
lovers  lies  their  only  hope  of  harmony. 

Now  the  problem  as  to  the  worthy  ob- 
ject of  love  is  precisely,  and,  as  I  myself 
maintain,  philosophically,  identical  with 
the  logical  problem  as  to  what  constitutes 


TJje  Conception  of  Immortality       ^^ 

an  individual  being.^  Whom  shall  one 
love  ?  The  unique  object.  There  shall 
be  no  other  like  the  beloved.  But  for 
what  characters  shall  one  choose  the  be- 
loved ?  For  mere  uniqueness,  for  mere  oddi- 
ties as  such  }  No.  For  perfections,  for  ex- 
cellencies, for  ideally  valuable  qualities,  is 
the  beloved  rightly  chosen,  and  not  other- 
wise. Be  it  so,  then.  The  lover,  if  justi- 
fied in  his  love,  believes  not  only  that  his 
beloved  is  different  from  all  other  beings, 
but  also  that  she  is  in  some  wise  more  ex- 
cellent than  all  others.  This  great  faith, 
if  sincere,  longs  for  expression.  One  must 
praise  the  beloved  ;  or  if  one  is  no  poet, 
one  must  look  abroad  to  find  the  already 
written  words  with  which  to  praise  her. 
But  in  what  language  shall  the  praise  be 
expressed }  In  human  speech  of  general 
meaning,  known  and  understood  by  all 
men.  But  the  qualities  that  the  lover  finds 
in  his  own  unique  beloved,  when  once  ex- 
pressed in  this  common  speech  of  men, 
become   in   large   measure   identical  with 


^4       TJje  Conception  of  Immortality 

the  qualities  that  all  the  beloved  women 
of  the  world  have  been  said,  by  the  poets 
and  the  lovers,  to  possess.  Of  course  there 
are  those  well  known  differences  in  types 
of  recognized  perfection,  which  have  to  do 
with  color  of  eyes,  and  with  other  features, 
but  on  the  whole,  the  lover  in  expressing, 
in  defining,  if  you  will,  the  perfections  of 
his  love,  has  merely  described  with  minor 
variations  one  type,  — and,  thank  Heaven, 
an  extremely  general  and  universally  well 
known  type,  —  the  type  of  all  the  beloved 
women.  In  other  words,  he  has  set  forth 
every  real  or  apparent  noble  quality  of  his 
beloved  except  precisely  what  makes  her 
unique.  Yet  his  loyalty  still  earnestly  in- 
sists that  he  loves  her  for  nothing  so  much 
as  for  that  she  is  unique,  and  is  even 
thereby  quite  unlike  all  the  other  beloved 


women. 


Hereupon  the  logician  must  become  a 

(little  suspicious  of  the  lover.  The  lover 
says  that  he  loves  but  One.  Yet  when 
he  tells  about   her  he  describes   a  type. 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       ^5 

Does  he  then  really  love  only  the  type  ? 
For,  alas,  his  poetic  accounts  are  but  gen- 
eral. Just  when  he  describes  his  love  — 
"  So  careful  of  the  type  he  seems,  —  so 
careless  of  the  single  life."  But  no,  this 
thought  is  an  insult  to  loyal  love.  True 
love  is  indeed  essentially  careful  of  the  sin- 
gle life.  Yet  is  it  then  truly  the  unique 
being  that  one  loves  }  Alas  !  if  this  is  true, 
why  then  does  the  lover's  halting  speech, 
when  it  praises,  describe  absolutely  nothing 
whatever  but  the  type }  The  beloved,  if 
logically  disposed,  may  even  notice  this,  the 
pathetic  irony  of  our  human  loyalty.  *'  You 
might  have  said  all  this,"  she  may  retort, 
—  "  you  might  have  said  all  this  to  any 
other  woman  who  merely  happened  to  please 
you." 

Now  in  vain  would  the  lover  attempt 
adequately  to  reply  that  the  beloved  is  in- 
deed, as  a  matter  of  mere  experience,  suffi- 
ciently different  in  face  and  carriage  from 
all  the  other  observable  people  to  be  capa- 
ble of  what  we  usually  call  identification, 


f~ 


^6       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

so  that,  for  instance,  the  postman  or  the 
teller  at  the  bank  also  no  doubt  recognizes 
her  face  when  he  sees  it,  and  practically 
confuses  her  with  nobody  else.     For  the 
ground  of  loyal  love  is  not  meant  to  be  sim- 
ply the  same  as  this  practical  ground  that 
we  use  for  purposes  of  ordinary  identifica- 
tion.    The   lover  does  not  mean  that  his 
beloved  is  merely  capable  of  being  identi- 
fied.    It  is  true  that  these  facts  of  experi- 
ence, these  observed  differences  of  face  and 
manner,  become,  from  the  first,  lighted  up 
for  the  lover  s  appreciation   with   all  the 
beauty   of   devotion,  and  so   blend  in  his 
experience  of  affection  with  his  sense  of 
loyalty.    That  is  so  far  as  it  should  be.    He 
loves  indeed  also  the  face  and  the  voice, 
but   for   the  sake  of   their  unique  owner. 
Yet  the  very  question  that  before  seemed 
to  us  a  very  formal  matter  of  logic  would 
become,  if   once   raised,  a  very   practical 
question  for  love.    I  do  not  advise  anybody 
to  raise  it  in  any  particular  case.     But,  as 
a  mere  matter  now  of  theory :  If  there  were 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       ^7 

found  in  the  world  another  with  just  such 
a  face,  voice,  bearing,  and  other  outward 
seeming  and  inward  sentiment  as  the  be- 
loved, would  the  lover  not  merely  by  chance 
confuse  the  two,  through  his  mortal  igno- 
rance, but  actually  and  knowingly  love  both 
of  them  at  once  and  equally  ?  If  he  must 
answer,  "  Yes,"  then  indeed,  whatever  his 
protestations,  he  loves  not  the  real  individ- 
ual. There  is  then  no  true  loyalty  in  his 
love.     He  is  fond  of  a  mere  type. 

But  if  he  loves  the  individual,  then  in- 
deed he  could  bear  the  easy  test  that,  in 
the  Hindu  poem  of  Nala  and  Damayanti, 
the  gods  apply  to  the  princess  of  the  story. 
■^or  when,  in  that  story,  the  princess,  by 
virtue  of  the  privilege  belonging  to  her 
rank,  is  about  to  choose  her  lover  from 
amongst  the  suitors,  assembled  upon  a 
solemn  occasion  to  hear  her  decision,  four 
of  the  gods,  to  please  their  high  caprice, 
stand  beside  the  real  lover,  whom  the  prin- 
cess has  already  in  her  heart  chosen. 
Each  god  assumes  precisely  the  real  lov- 


^8       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

er's  guise  and  seeming.  The  princess  finds 
then  before  her  five  men,  all  absolutely 
alike,  and  all  fashioned  exactly  as  is  the 
man  of  her  heart.  In  her  perplexity  she 
wonders  a  brief  moment ;  but  then,  per- 
ceiving in  her  mind  the  heavenly  wiles, 
she  lifts  up  her  voice  in  humble  prayer 
that  those  of  the  group  who  are  not  the 
right  one  may  be  pleased  to  behave  a  little 
more  like  gods,  that  she  may  see  more 
clearly  to  choose  her  own.  The  gods  re- 
lent, and  obey.  But  the  princess,  as  she 
thus  finds  her  mortal  lover,  hereby  shows 
us  also  somewhat  more  clearly  what  our 
loyal  consciousness  of  the  nature  of  an  in- 
dividual means.  It  means  that  for  our 
f  Will,  however  sense  deceives,  and  however 
)  ill  thought  defines,  there  shall  be  none  pre- 
/  cisely  like  the  beloved.  And  just  herein, 
^  namely,  in  this  voluntary  choice,  in  this  ac- 
tive postulate,  lies  our  essential  conscious- 
ness of  the  true  nature  of  individuality. 
Individuality  is  something  that  we  demand 
of  our  world,  but  that,  in  this  present  realm 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       59 

of  experience,  we  never  find.  It  is  the  ob- 
ject  of  our  purposes,  but  not  now  of  our 
attainment ;  of  our  intentions,  but  not  of 
their  present  fulfillment ;  of  our  will,  but 
not  of  our  sense  nor  yet  of  our  abstract 
thought ;  of  our  rational  appreciation,  but 
not  of  our  description  ;  of  our  love,  but  not 
of  our  verbal  confession.  We  pursue  it 
with  the  instruments  of  a  thought  and  of 
an  art  that  can  define  only  types,  and  of  a 
form  of  experience  that  can  show  us  only 
instances  and  generalities.  The  unique") 
eludes  us  ;  yet  we  remain  faithful  to  the 
ideal  of  it ;  and  in  spite  of  sense  and  of  our 
merely  abstract  thinking,  it  becomes  fori  ^ 
us  the  most  real  thing  in  the  actual  world, 
although  for  us  it  is  the  elusive  goal  of  an 
infinite  quest.* 

And  therefore  it  is  that  the  lovers  join 
in  reporting  the  same  things  of  all  whom 
they  love ;  yet  in  meaning,  nevertheless, 
wholly  different  beings  by  their  speech. 
Therefore  it  is  that  the  soldiers  in  Bay- 
ard Taylor's  Sebastopol  lyric,  as  they  sing 


t 


40       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

in  the  trenches,  before  they  storm  the  fort, 
try  to  confess  each  the  tearful  secret  of 
his  own  heart,  as  he  thinks  of  home,  but 
they  do  so  in  words  that  are  the  same  for 
all  of  them  :  — 

/)       ( "  Each  heart  recalled  a  different  name, 
V^     }   But  all  sang  Annie  Laurie." 

The  true  individuals  are  thus  not  seen  by 
us,  not  described  by  us.  But  in  our  more 
intimate  life  we  love  individuals,  we  will  to 
pursue  them  and  to  be  loyal  to  them. 
C  Love  and  loyalty  never  directly  find  their 
"  unique  objects,  but  remain  faithful  to  them 
although  unseen. 


IV 


E  have  so  far  dealt  both  with  vari- 
ous negative  aspects  of  this  idea 
of  individuality  and  also  with  its 
positive  significance  for  life.  We  must 
now  ask,  Is  there  any  truth  in  this  idea  of 
individuality  ?  Are  we  in  any  sense  right 
in  regarding  our  world  as  one  where  there 
are  these  unique  individuals  whom  we 
mortals  can  define  only  in  terms  of  our 
will  to  seek  them,  and  can  conceive  only 
as  the  goal  of  an  essentially  ideal  process  ? 
The  adequate  answer  to  this  question  as 
to  the  real  Being  of  an  individual  would 
involve,  as  I  have  confessed  from  the  very 
outset,  an  entire  system  of  philosophy. 
Shall  I  venture  here  merely  to  hint  the 
grounds  upon  which  I  think  that  we  have 
a  right  at  least  to  attempt  just  such  primal 
problems  ?    This  idea  of  the  individuality 


42        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

of  all  things  is,  in  my  own  opinion,  an  idea 
not  merely  of  the  emotional  interest  now 
illustrated.     It    is    also    an    idea  without 
which,  in  the  end,  all  serious  science  is  im- 
possible.    For   science  too,  although  not 
sentimental,  is  itself  a  loyal  expression  of 
an  essentially  practical  interest  in  final,  i.  e., 
in  individual  truth.     Science,  if  unable  to 
describe  or  to  find  the  unique,  everywhere 
postulates   its  existence  as  the  goal  of  a 
process  of  inquiry.     And  this  idea  of  the 
individual  is  an  idea  that  directs  all  con- 
duct of  our  intellect  in  the  presence  of  our 
experience.     To  believe  anywhere  in  genu- 
ine reality  is  to  believe  in  individuality. 
In  every  special   science  that   deals  with 
either  nature  or  man,  you  will  find,  then, 
if  you  look  closer,  that  in  some  form  the 
concept  and  the  problem  of  the  individual 
enters  in  a  fashion  less  sentimental  indeed 
than  is  the  lover's  problem,  but  quite  as 
insistent,  quite  as  baffling,   both  for  our 
empirical  search  and  for  our  abstract  defi- 
nitions, and  quite  as  suggestive  that  if  our 


Tlje  Conception  of  Immortality       4^ 

world  has  reality,  this  reality  is  one  which 
no  finite  process  of  finding  and  defining 
can  exhaust.  Quite  impossible  is  it,  how- 
ever, to  decline  to  face  this  problem  upon 
the  supposed  grounds  that  the  ultimate 
nature  of  real  things  is  once  for  all  un- 
knowable. The  conception  of  reality  itself 
is  precisely  as  much  an  expression  of  our 
human  needs  and  purposes,  as  is  the  con- 
ception of  a  steam  engine  or  of  a  political 
party ;  and  if  the  conception  so  far  baffles 
us,  that  is  because  we  have  not  yet  looked 
deeply  enough  into  the  life  out  of  which 
this  very  conception  of  the  real  world  of 
individuals  springs.  Let  us  then  inquire 
a  little  more  searchingly.  To  be  sure,  for 
this  inquiry  there  is  here  no  adequate  space. 
I  can  give  only  a  bare  hint  of  an  idealistic 
interpretation  of  the  real  world.  Else- 
where I  have  tried  to  state  in  explicit  form 
the  argument  now  to  be  barely  indicated. 
Regard  what  follows,  if  you  will,  not  as 
any  attempt  at  proof,  but  as  a  mere  sum- 
mary. 


44       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

We  have  up  to  this  point  spoken  of  the 
relation  of  the  concept  of  the  individual  to 
I  the  direct  experience  of  sense,  and  to  the 
1  abstract  definitions  of   the  intellect.     We 
X  /    have  found  that  neither  of  these  could  fur- 
//       nish  to  us  an  adequate  expression  of  the 
0/'  nature   of   an  individual.     We   have   also 

j  seen,  in  speaking  of  the  more  vital  aspects 
i  of  our  problem,  that  an  individual,  if  not 
\  describable,  is  still  sincerely  intended  or 
willed  as  the  object  of  a  devotion  that,  in 
us,  can  only  express  itself  as  the  endless 
pursuit  of  a  goal.  The  natural  statement 
of  our  problem  becomes  then  this :  Do 
these  endless  pursuits  of  ideal  goals,  in 
terms  of  which  we  define  our  relation  to 
the  undefinable  individual  beings  whom  we 
love,  or  whom  in  science  we  seek  to  know, 
—  do  these  ideal  pursuits,  I  say,  correspond 
I  to  a  truth  anywhere  expressed  beyond  us  ? 
Is  reality  in  its  wholeness  a  realm  of  Pur- 
pose, rather  than  merely  of  observable 
finite  facts  and  of  abstractly  definable  char- 
acters ? 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       45 

As  to  the  most  general  answer  to  this 
question,  I  must  indeed  first  respond  that, 
for  the  reasons  now  illustrated,  I  hold  the 
concept  of  individuality  to  be  not  merely 
from  our  human  point  of  view,  but  in  itself, 
essentially  and  altogether,  a  teleological 
concept, — a  concept  implying  that  the 
facts  of  any  world  where  there  really  are 
individuals  express  will  and  purpose.  Sup- 
pose a  being  not  now  a  man,  but  a  being 
as  far  above  our  mere  poverty  of  conscious 
life  as  you  please,  yet  a  being  whose  whole 
life  consists  merely  of  sense  contents,  or 
of  mere  facts  of  immediate  feeling,  — 
colors,  forms,  tastes,  touches,  pleasures, 
and  pains.  Such  a  being  could  indeed  ob- 
serve. But  he  would  never  observe  indi- 
viduals as  individuals.  On  the  other  hand, 
suppose  any  purely  intelligent  being,  whose 
mind  was  full  of  mere  ideas,  i.  e.,  of  pat- 
terns, types,  schemes,  class  conceptions, 
definitions.  Such  a  being,  however  wise 
in  his  own  way,  could  never  know  individ- 
ual facts  as  such.     He  might  know  laws, 


46       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

orders  of  truth,  systems  of  necessary  valid- 
ity ;  but  if  his  world  contained  individual 
facts,  he  would  never  know  this  to  be  true. 
He  would  be,  for  instance,  by  our  hypo- 
thesis, himself  an  individual,  for  we  have 
just  spoken  of  him  as  such  ;  but  he  would 
never  be  able  to  know  himself  as  this  indi- 
vidual. With  the  proverbial  absent-mind- 
edness of  the  abstractly  wise,  this  supposed 
pure  intelligence  would  be  quite  unaware 
that  he  himself,  or  that  anybody  else,  pos- 
sessed individuality.  He  would  be  loyal 
to  no  individual  objects.  His  world  would 
be  for  him  a  collection  of  disembodied 
theorems,  and  of  mere  possibilities. 

And  now,  even  if  you  suppose  the  being 
of  mere  experience  with  whom  we  just  be- 
gan, to  acquire  all  the  wisdom  of  the  other 
being,  the  supposed  abstract  thinker ;  still, 
even  this  resulting  being,  who  would  be  an 
observer  of  ideal  laws  and  of  immediate 
experiences,  in  this  combination  would 
nevertheless  not  yet  find  true  individuality 
in  his  world.     His  world  would  now  be  one 


The  Conception  of  Immortality      47 

where  there  were  types  and  feehngs ;  but 
still  not  one  where  unique  beings  were 
observed  to  be  real. 

But  next  suppose  a  being  whose  world  \ 
not  merely  shows  him  contents  of  feeling  A 
and  types  of  law,  but  also  expresses  his  I. 
will,  and  not  merely  expresses  this  will,  but( 
satisfies  it.     Suppose  that  this  being  finds' 
in  his  world,  namely,  all  that  his  love  and 
all  that  his  wisdom  seek.     This  being  will 
observe  his  world  as  embodiment  of  his 
plans,   as   an   exhaustive    presentation   of 
his  will  and  purpose.     Now  this  being  can 
indeed  say :    "  This  world  and  no  other  is 
my  world,  for  these  facts  and  no  others  are 
what  I  want,  just  because  in  these  facts 
my  purposes  are  satisfied."     For  the  satis- 
fied will  is  precisely  the  will  that  seeks  no 
other   embodiment.     Now   such   a   being,  ( 
and  such  a  being  only,  would  be  aware  of  I 
the  uniqueness  of  his  facts,  and  so  would  1 
know  individuals  as  individuals. 

The  very  conception,  then,  of  an  individ- 
ual as  a  real  being,  precisely  because  it  is 


48       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

no  abstract  conception,  but  is  rather  the 
conception  of  a  -unique^eing,  is  one  that 
no  pure  thought  or  experience  can  express, 
but  is  a  conception  expressible  only  in 
terms  of  a  satisfied  will,  An  individual  is 
,  a  being  that  adequately  expresses  a  pur- 
^  V  .  pose.  Or  again,  an  individual  so  expresses 
a  purpose  that  no  other  being  can  take  the 
place  of  this  individual  as  an  expression  of 
this  purpose.  And  the  sole  test  of  this 
sort  of  uniqueness  lies  in  the  fact  that  in 
this  individual  being,  just  in  so  far  as  its 
type  gets  expression  at  all,  the  will  or  pur- 
pose which  it  expresses  rests  content  with 
it,  desires  no  other,  will  have  no  other. 

I  conclude  then,  so  far,  that  if  this  world 
contains  real  individuals  at  all,  it  is  a  teleo- 
logical  world,  and  a  world  that  not  only 
expresses  purpose,  but  completely  and  ade- 
quately expresses  a  purpose  precisely  in  so 
far  as  it  contains  real  individuals. 

Nor  need  this  result  be  interpreted 
merely  with  reference  to  the  more  senti- 
mental illustrations  used  a  moment  since. 


T1)e  Conception  of  Immortality       ^g 

The  purposes  which  various  individuals  ex- 
press may  be  those  of  science,  or  those  of 
human  love,  —  those  of  our  warmer  pas- 
sions, or   those   of   our   calmer  reason,  — 
those  of  man,  or  those  of  God.     Any  of 
these  various  purposes,  or  all  of  them  at 
once,  may  win  a  place  in  Being.    My  whole 
case  so  far  is  that  whether  you  talk  of 
angels  or  atoms,  your  individual  beings,  if 
real  at  all,  are  real  only  as  unique  embodi- 
ments of  purpose.     And  their  uniqueness 
can  only  depend  upon  the  fact  that  in  each 
of  them  some  will  is  so  satisfied  that  it 
seeks  and  will  have  no  other.     Therefore 
it  is  indeed  that  loyal  human  love  is  in  us 
the  best  example  of  an  individuating  prin- 
ciple.    The  love  that  will  have  no  other  \ 
than  this  beloved  is  our  best  hint  of  the 
sense  in  which  purpose  must  be  fulfilled  in  ' 
the  world,  if  individuals  are  to  be  real  at  all. 
Our  question  then  becomes  this:  Does 
the  real  world  fulfill  purposes.?     Does  it 
express  will.?     Does   it   embody  ideals  in 
unique  and  satisfactory  fulfillment.?     But 


50        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

this  question  at  once  raises  the  most  cen- 
*    tral  issue  of  philosophy.     In  what  sense  is 
there  any  real  world  ?     What  are  its  ulti- 
mate facts  ?     What  is  Reality  ?  ^ 

The  answer  to  these  questions  must  be, 
like  the  questions,  founded  upon  a  desire 
to  deal  with  first  principles  for  their  own 
sake.  For  the  issue  upon  which  depends 
every  philosophical  problem  about  the  gen- 
eral order  of  the  world  is  raised  when  one 
asks  the  question.  What  is  a  fact  .■*  We 
have  said  that  the  most  significant  facts, 
even  of  the  world  of  common  sense  and  of 
science,  have  aspects  that  transcend  the 
limits  of  our  direct  human  consciousness. 
But  we  have  not  said  that  such  facts  have 
no  relation  whatever  to  our  own  expe- 
rience, but  only  that  our  human  type  of 
experience  is  very  inadequate  to  exhaust 
their  meaning,  or  to  present  them  in  their 
wholeness.  In  truth,  our  whole  search 
after  facts,  our  whole  belief  in  the  reality 
of  the  world,  depends  upon  a  recognition 
that  our  experience  is  inadequate  to  ex- 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       5/ 

press  the  conscious  purposes  that  we  have 
in  mind  even  when  we  scrutinize  this  our 
experience  itself,  to  see  what  it  contains. 
And  our  own  philosophical  argument  will 
hold  that  in  consequence  you  must  define 
the  whole  Reality  of  things  in  terms  of 
Purpose. 

At  any  thinking  moment  of  your  human 
life,  you  inquire,  you  find  yourself  ignorant, 
you  doubt,  you  wonder,  or  you  investigate. 
Now  as  you  do  this  you  have  present  to 
your  consciousness  what  are  called,  in  the 
narrower  sense  of  that  term,  ideas,  —  that 
is,  ideas  of  objects  not  now  present  to  you, 
and  of  objects  that,  if  present,  would  an- 
swer your  questions,  settle  your  doubts, 
accomplish  the  end  of  your  investigations. 
Now  your  ideas,  as  such,  mean  precisely 
certain  thoughtful  processes  that  are  more 
or  less  consciously  present  in  your  momen- 
tary state  of  mind  as  you  inquire.  But  the 
objects  concerning  which  you  inquire  are, 
by  hypothesis,  not  wholly  present  to  you  at 
the  instant  of  your  doubt  or  wonder.     For 


52        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

were  they  present,  your  inquiries  would  be 
answered.  They  are  viewed  as  absent ;  and 
you  also  call  them,  taken,  as  it  were,  in 
themselves,  —  you  call  them,  I  say,  the 
facts  in  the  case.  You  conceive  them, 
usually,  as  in  large  measure  independent  of 
your  ideas.  And  yet  the  facts  and  your 
ideas  cannot  be  in  truth  wholly  independ- 
ent of  each  other  as  ordinary  Realism  as- 
sumes ;  for  were  they  without  any  mutual 
dependence  whatever,  how  could  the  ideas 
really  have  the  facts  as  their  objects }  Or 
how  could  it  make  any  difference  to  the 
ideas,  as  conscious  processes,  with  an  in- 
tent or  purpose  of  their  own,  whether 
the  wholly  independent  facts  agreed  with 
them,  or  not  ?  Or  yet  again,  to  put  the 
same  consideration  in  another  form,  the 
ideas,  if  they  have  any  bearing  upon  facts 
at  all,  even  if  they  simply  express  igno- 
rance of  the  facts,  or  doubt  about  the  facts, 
or  error  regarding  facts,  or  blunder,  or 
delusion,  —  yet  still  doubt,  or  error,  or  de- 
lusion about  facts,  which  are  really  their 


Tloe  Conception  of  Immortality       jj 

objects,  —  the  ideas,  I  say,  must  in  any 
such  case  stand  in  that  seemingly  so  mys- 
terious relation  to  the  facts  beyond  them 
which  is  implied  when  we  say,  The  ideas 
are  sicch  as  genuinely  to  mean  tJie  facts. 
Even  in  your  conscious  ignorance,  in  doubt, 
in  error,  in  delusion,  if  you  really  doubt, 
or  err,  or  are  deluded,  your  ideas,  however 
fragmentary,  are  thus  linked  by  the  tie  of 
objectively  genuine  meaning  to  the  outer 
facts,  however  lofty  or  remote,  concerning 
which  you  think  and  are  therefore  in  one 
Whole  of  Meaning  with  those  facts. 

Now  what  does  this  genuine  tie,  called 
the  meaning  of  an  idea,  this  link  by  which 
the  idea  is  bound  to  its  seemingly  external 
object,  called  the  outer  fact,  —  what,  I  ask, 
'  does  this  link  imply  ?  What  is  the  true 
union  between  any  idea  and  its  object  ? 
The  question  as  stated  is  absolutely  gen- 
eral, is  involved  in  every  inquiry,  in  any 
sort  of  fact,  and  is  therefore  at  issue  when- 
ever you  consider  the  relation  of  any  of 
your  ideas,  and  so  of  yourself  as  the  person 


^4        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

having  these  ideas,  to  facts  whether  phy- 
sical or  spiritual,  to  facts  whether  in  a 
laboratory  or  in  the  eternal  world,  to  facts 
whether  in  this  room  or  in  the  remotest 
ages  of  time,  to  facts  about  your  next 
friend,  or  to  facts  of  God's  mind  or  of  im- 
mortality. If,  for  instance,  I  now  have  a 
genuine  idea  of  your  minds  while  I  speak 
to  you,  or  if  you  have  any  idea  really  re- 
ferring to  my  own  mind,  then  our  minds 
are  actually  and  metaphysically  linked  by 
the  ties  of  mutual  meaning.  In  other 
words,  we  are  then  not  wholly  sundered 
beings.  We  are  somehow  more  whole  of 
meaning.  And  if  you  now  think  of  Sirius, 
or  of  the  universe,  then  your  idea,  if  it 
really  means  anything  whatever  that  is 
objective,  is  in  the  same  whole  of  meaning 
with  your  object.  But  what  constitutes 
this  whole  of  meaning  } 

The  question  has  its  especial  difficulty 
in  the  fact  that,  in  speaking  of  an  idea  and 
its  object,  just  in  so  far  as  you  sunder  the 
two,  and  view  them  as  mutually  independ- 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       ^^ 

ent  entities,  you  fail  to  see  how  the  con- 
scious idea  can  make  any  real  reference  to 
that  entity  yonder,  beyond  it,  and  different 
from  it.  For  how  should  anybody,  or  how 
should  anybody's  ideas,  consciously  refer 
to  an  object  that  is  still  in  no  sense  a  part 
of  the  consciousness  which  possesses  the 
idea?  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  object  to 
which  our  ideas  refer  is  simply  itself  one 
of  our  own  ideas,  or  is  simply  a  fact  pre- 
sent to  our  experience,  —  if,  in  other  words, 
idea  and  object  are  in  my  own  unity  of 
consciousness  together,  then  how  should 
an  idea  be  able  to  err,  as  we  constantly 
find  our  own  ideas  erring,  regarding  their 
objects  ?  How,  in  brief,  should  ignorance 
and  error  be  at  all  possible  ? 

To  bring  our  whole  problem  then  to  a 
single  focus  :  When  I  think  of  outer  exist- 
ence, I  think  of  something  as  not  wholly 
and  just  now  consciously  present  to  me  ; 
and  yet  I  think  of  myself  as  meaning  this 
something.  My  object  is  somehow  here, 
in   my   consciousness,  —  genuinely  here  ; 


5^        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

and  yet  somehow  not  here,  since  I  inquire 
and  perhaps  err  about  it.  Now  how  can  I 
thus  mean  to  refer  to  more  than  my  object 
now  present  to  my  consciousness,  while 
still,  in  order  thus  to  refer  at  all,  I  must 
fix  my  attention  upon  some  fact  now  pre- 
sent in  my  mind  ? 

To  all  these  fundamental  questions  phi- 
•  losophy,  as  I  hold,  must  answer  :  I  can  refer 
to  any  object  beyond  me  solely  by  observ- 
ing the  inadequacy  of  my  present  and 
passing  conscious  idea  to  its  own  conscious 
purpose.  I  cannot  directly  look  beyond 
my  own  consciousness  ;  but  I  pass  beyond 
my  present  solely  by  virtue  of  my  will,  my 
intent,  my  dissatisfaction.  But  this  very 
will  and  dissatisfaction  have  my  own  pre- 
sent imperfection  and  inadequacy  as  their 
direct  object.  And  consequently,  by  the 
object  itself,  by  my  real  world,  I  can  mean 
nothing  but  that  which  in  the  end,  despite 
all  my  ignorance  or  error  or  finite  misfor- 
tune, somehow  adequately  fulfills  my  whole 
will.     Thus  the  very  idea  of  a  real  being 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       ^y 

is  the  idea  of  something  that  fulfills  a  pur- 
pose. What  is  thus  thought  of  is  indeed 
conceived  as  the  outer  object  of  an  idea, 
and  so  as  a  fact  beyond  the  idea,  and 
yet  meant  by  the  idea.  This  relation  of 
being  beyond  an  idea,  and  yet  meant  by 
that  idea,  is,  however,  a  possible  relation,  a 
relation  that  has  any  sense  whatever  only 
in  so  far,  first,  as  the  idea  is  an  inadequate 
expression  in  our  present  human  conscious- 
ness of  its  own  purpose,  and  in  so  far, 
secondly,  as  the  object  meant  stands  re- 
lated to  the  idea  as  that  which  fulfills  the 
whole  intent  which  is  now  partially  ex- 
pressed in  the  idea.  And  so  we  can  indeed 
say,  as  Schopenhauer  said,  although  not 
wholly  in  his  sense,  The  real  world  is  my 
Will. 

In  other  words,  to  be,  to  exist,  to  be  a  ;/ 
fact,  to  be  real,  —  any  one  of  these  expres- 
sions simply  means,  to  express  in  wholeness 
the  meaning  that  imperfect  conscious 
ideas,  such  as  we  mortals  have,  now  only 
partially  express.     To  be,  or  to  be  a  fact, 


^8        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

means  then,  not  to  be  independent  of  finite 
ideas,  but  to  accomplish  fully  and  finally 
what  they  only  intend,  to  present  in  whole- 
ness what  they  only  find  in  fragment,  to 
be  one  with  their  purpose,  but  free  from 
their  inadequacy,  to  fulfill  what  they  only 
propose,  to  attain  what  they  only  will.  In 
saying  this  I  in  no  sense  mean  that  reality 
meets  all  your  momentary  wishes  and  ca- 
prices. For  your  momentary  wishes  and 
caprices  are  simply  unconscious  of  their 
own  whole  meaning  ;  and  therefore  they 
very  generally  have  to  be  transformed  in 
-  order  to  be  satisfied.  But  what  my  doc- 
trine does  mean  is  that  a  world  of  onto- 
logical  fragments,  of  facts  that  are  not  in 
one  whole  of  meaning  together,  is  never 
•  to  be  found.  There  are  no  ideas  sundered 
^  from  their  objects.  Ontologically  speak- 
ing, where  the  idea  is,  there  is  the  object 
also.  Only  the  momentary  human  idea  is 
the  object  imperfectly  brought  to  a  finite 
consciousness.  The  apparent  sundering  of 
idea  and  fact  is  therefore  simply  an  illusion 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       ^g 

of  our  own  finitude.  Nor  do  the  ideas 
mysteriously  refer  to  objects  that  first  exist 
beyond  them  and  the7i  are  somehow  the 
topics  of  this  reference.  No,  the  true 
relation  of  idea  and  object  is  not  mysteri- 
ous. It  is  merely  the  very  relation  so 
familiar  to  any  of  us,  the  relation  which 
you  have  now  in  mind  when  you  observe 
that  you  have  not  fully  present  to  your 
momentary  self  the  fulfillment  of  your  own 
present  conscious  purposes,  nor  yet  a  full 
consciousness  even  of  what  those  purposes 
themselves  mean.  In  fact,  just  in  so  far 
as  you  lack  anything,  or  in  so  far  as  you 
know  not  wholly  what  you  mean,  or  have 
not  now  what  you  all  the  while  consciously 
seek,  just  in  so  far  you  define  your  object 
as  beyond  you.  The  incompleteness  of 
your  present  self-expression  of  your  own 
meaning  is  then  the  sole  warrant  that  you 
have  for  asserting  that  there  is  a  world 
beyond  you.  And  this  incompleteness,  so 
far  as  you  are  conscious  of  it,  gives  in  its 
turn  the  only  possible  meaning  to  the  ex- 


^ 


6o       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

ternality  ascribed  to  the  complete  expres- 
sion of  your  present  meaning.  Thus 
\uLwhile  you  indeed  expect  reality  to  defeat 
^  your  caprices,  and  to  refute  your  errors, 
you  still  rightly  demand  that  reality  should 
adequately  express  your  whole  true  mean- 
ing. 

In  consequence,  merely  by  reading  this 
result  in  the  reverse  order  you  have  at 
once  a  definition  of  the  deepest  essence  of 
the  existent  world.  What  is  real  is  simply, 
in  its  wholeness,  that  which  consciously 
completes  or  finally  expresses  the  very 
meaning  that,  in  you,  is  at  this  instant  of 
your  human  experience  consciously  in- 
complete. That  meaning  of  yours,  viz., 
the  world,  the  reality,  the  whole,  yes  the 
absolute,  is  now  in  its  very  being  really 
although  inadequately  present  to  yourpass- 
ing  consciousness  ;  but  your  finite  defect 
is  that  you  know  not  consciously,  just  now, 
the  whole  of  what  you  even  now  genuinely 
mean.  Or  again  :  you  have  not  now  at 
once  both  wholly  and  consciously  present 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       61 

the  complete  expression  of  your  own  will. 
But  this  complete  expression,  with  you 
and  in  essence  in  you  really,  even  now,  but 
not  consciously  present  to  you  now,  this 
whole  will  and  life  of  yours  is  the  world. 
That  complete  expression,  as  the  Hindoos 
said,  —  that  is  the  Reality ^  that  is  the 
Soul,  that  art  Thou.  The  real  world  then 
isjteleplogical.  It  does  express  a  purpose. 
It  does  express  this  purpose  rationally, 
wholly,  finally.  And  this  purpose  is  the 
very  purpose  now  hinted  in  your  own  pass- 
ing thrill  of  hope  and  of  longing. 


UT  now,  after  listening  to  this  mere 
sketch  of  the  general  idealistic 
theory  of  the  ultimate  reality,  after 
hearing  this  interpretation  of  the  essential 
nature  of  the  world  order  in  its  wholeness, 
you  may  well  ask  how,  in  case  there  is  this 
essential  relation  of  every  finite  idea  to  the 
whole  meaning  of  the  world,  there  is  any 
room  left  for  finite  individuality  as  any  dis- 
tinguishable fact.  The  doctrine  that  I  have 
just  sketched  is  indeed  obviously  a  version 
of  a  doctrine  about  God  as  an  Absolute 
Being,  and  about  his  relation  to  every  finite 
conscious  life  just  in  so  far  as  that  life, 
seeing  its  own  imperfections,  is  seeking 
for  truth  beyond  itself.  No  one  can  seek 
for  a  truth  beyond  his  present  self,  unless 
the  seeker  is  already  in  his  inmost  purpose 
one  with  the  Absolute  Life   in  which  all 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       6^ 

truth  is  expressed.    But  on  the  other  hand, 
this  oneness  of  divine  and  of  finite  purpose 
is  in  some  sense  sure  to  exist  in  case  of 
every  finite  life ;   for  all  life  is  an  expres- 
sion of  the  one  universal  Will,  and  in  its 
turn   is   in   the  most  intimate  relation  to 
that  one  will.    Ignorance  and  error  as  well 
as  evil  are,  when  viewed  as  such,  and  in 
their  separation  from  the  whole,  imperfect 
self-expressions  of  the  Absolute  that  can 
only  appear  within   the  limits  of  a  finite 
fragment  of  the  whole,  such  as  any  one  of 
us  now  is.     No  finite  idea  can  fail,  even  in 
the  lowest  depths  of  its  finitude,  to  intend 
this  oneness  with  the  Absolute  upon  which, 
according   to  our  account,  all   knowledge 
and  all  truth  depend.     But  on  the  other 
hand,  if  all  reality  is  one  and  for  One,  and 
is  the  expression  of  a  single  purpose,  so 
that  God  is  immanent,  is  everywhere  nigh 
to  the  finite  life,  and  is  everywhere  meant 
by  us  all,  — then  we  seem  indeed  to  have 
found  that  the  world  expresses  one  absolute 
purpose,  and  is  real  only  as  accomplishing 


64       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

that  purpose.  And  we  seem  to  have  found 
also  that  at  any  instant  what  we  consciously 
intend,  in  all  our  finite  strivings,  is  oneness 
with  God.  But  what,  you  may  ask,  has 
become  of  our  individuality,  in  so  far  as 
we  were  to  be  just  ourselves,  and  nobody 
else  ? 

I  reply,  first,  that  in  referring  to  reality 
in  these  idealistic  terms,  as  the  final  fulfill- 
ment of  a  united  purpose,  —  as  the  com- 
plete carrying  out  of  what  all  finite  purposes 
more  or  less  blindly  intend,  —  we  have  at 
least  pointed  out  where  there  is  attained 
something  which  no  abstract  description 
of  finite  facts  could  show  us,  namely,  the 
uniqueness  of  the  Divine  Life,  and  of  the 
real  world  in  which  this  life  is  expressed. 
A  will  satisfied  has  in  God's  whole  life 
found  its  goal,  and  seeks  no  other.  I  do 
not  indeed  conceive  the  Absolute  as  find- 
ing his  goal  at  any  one  point  in  what  we 
call  time.  Now  we  wait  and  suffer  and 
seek.  And  all  life,  all  striving,  and  all 
science  are  efforts  to  win  ultimately  this 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       6<y 

absolute  meaning,  which  is  our  own  will 
completely  expressed.  But  it  is  the  whole 
world  of  past,  present,  and  future,  it  is  that 
totality  of  life  and  of  experience  which  our 
every  moment  of  conscious  life  implies  and 
seeks,  which  is  fulfilled  in  the  Absolute.^ 
Now  neither  abstract  thought  nor  immedi- 
ate experience,  taken  merely  as  we  men 
find  or  define  them,  can  describe  or  discover 
the  unique.  Only  the  complete  fulfillment 
of  purpose  can  leave  no  other  fact  beyond 
to  be  sought ;  and  primarily,  for  this  very 
reason,  only  the  Absolute  Life  can  be  an 
entirely  whole  individual.  God,  then,  is  / 
indeed  the  primary  individual.  His  world, 
his  life,  his  expression  taken  in  its  whole- 
ness, is  that  individual  fact  which  you  and 
I  are  at  all  times  trying  to  find,  to  win,  to 
see,  to  describe,  to  attain.  As  finite  beings 
we  fail  at  every  moment.  It  is  our  failure 
that  we  try  to  correct  by  our  science  or  by 
our  prudence.     By  no  mystic  vision   can[  '^\ 

we  win  our   union  with   him.     We   must    ^"^^ '  r 
Joil.    But  he  is  our  whole  true  life,  in  whom      -^J^"** 


66       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,  and 
in  him  we  triumph  and  attain,  —  not  now, 
not  here  in  time  and  amidst  the  blind 
strivings  of  this  instant,  but  in  that  which 
our  strivings  always  intend,  and  pursue, 
and  love.  For  "  restless  are  our  souls," 
as  Augustine  in  the  famiHar  passage  said, 
"until  they  rest,  O  God,  in  thee." 

But  now,  on  the  other  hand,  consider 
the  consequences  of  all  this  for  ourselves. 
The  two  deepest  facts  about  the  real  world 
are,  from  this  idealistic  point  of  view,  that 
it  is  everywhere  the  expression,  more  or 
less  partial  and  fragmentary,  of  meaning 
and  of  purpose.  Therefore  it  makes  our 
science  and  our  practical  work  possible, 
and  demands  them  of  us.  But  if  viewed 
as  a  whole  it  is  an  unique  fulfillment  of  pur- 
pose, —  the  only  begotten  son  of  the  Divine 
Will.  It  is  such  then,  in  its  wholeness  as 
a  God's  world,  that  nothing  else  could  take 
its  place  consistently  with  the  will  which 
the  whole  freely  expresses,  carries  out,  and 
fulfills.    But  now  of  an  unique  whole,  every 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       6j 

fragment  and  aspect,  just  by  virtue  of  its 
relation  to  the  whole,  is  inevitably  unique. 
Were  the  world  essentially  unfinished,  and 
were  it  not  the  expression  of  a  purpose, 
then  the  uniqueness  or  individuality  of 
any  of  its  parts  or  aspects  would  remain  a 
fact  nowhere  present  to  anybody's  insight. 
But  if  the  absolute  knowledge  sees  the 
whole  as  a  complete  fulfillment  of  purpose, 
then  every  fact  in  the  world  occupies  its 
unique  place  in  the  world.  Were  just  that 
fact  changed,  the  meaning  of  the  whole 
would  be  just  in  so  far  altered,  and  another 
world  would  take  the  place  of  the  present 
one.  Just  as,  in  case  a  given  cathedral  is 
unique,  and  has  not  its  equal  in  all  the 
world  of  being,  then  every  stone  and  every 
arch  and  every  carving  in  that  cathedral  is 
unique,  by  having  its  one  place  in  that 
whole,  just  so  too,  in  the  universe,  if  the 
whole  is  the  expression  of  the  single  and 
absolute  will,  every  fragment  of  life  therein 
has  its  unique  place  in  the  divine  life,  —  a 
place  that  no  other  fragment  of  life  could 
fill.7 


68        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

And  so,  although  you  can  never  see, 
and  can  never  abstractly  define,  your  own 
unique  or  individual  place  in  the  world,  or 
your  character  as  this  individual,  you  are 
unique  and  therefore  individual  in  your  life 
and  meaning,  just  because  you  have  your 
place  in  the  divine  life,  and  that  life  is  one. 
And  therefore  it  is  true  that  in  this  same 
realm  of  the  single  divine  life  which  loves 
and  chooses  this  world  as  the  fulfillment  of 
its  own  purpose,  and  will  have  no  other, 
your  friend's  life  glows  with  just  that 
unique  portion  of  the  divine  will  that  no 
other  life  in  all  the  world  expresses.  We 
finite  beings  then  are  unique  and  individ- 
ual in  our  differences,  from  one  another 
and  from  all  possible  beings,  just  because 
we  share  in  the  very  uniqueness  of  God's 
individuality  and  purpose.  We  borrow  our 
variety  from  our  various  relations  to  his 
unity. 

And  thus  the  claims  of  Knowledge  and 
of  Will  are  from  the  absolute  point  of 
view   reconciled.     For    knowledge   recog- 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       6g 

nizes  no  diversity  except  upon  the  ground 
of  an  identity.  And  this  is  true  of  us  all, 
—  namely,  that  our  very  variety  is  based 
upon  the  fact  that  the  absolute  life  and  its 
world  form  one  whole  and  are  in  their  one-j 
ness  unique.  For  just  because  the  satis- 
fied divine  purpose  permits  no  other  to 
take  the  place  of  this  world,  in  its  whole- 
ness, just  so  each  one  of  us  has  his  own 
distinct  place  in  this  unique  whole.  But 
on  the  other  hand  Will  primarily  seeks 
that  which  is  different  from  all  other  ob- 
jects, —  namely,  the  individual,  the  finality, 
the  single  fulfillment  of  striving.  And  just 
such  a  fact  is  the  whole  world,  and  there- 
fore is  every  part  thereof  unique  in  its  own 
kind  and  degree  of  being. 


1^ 


VI 


O  far,  then,  as  we  live  and  strive 
at  all,  our  lives  are  various,  are 
needed  for  the  whole,  and  are 
unique.  No  one  of  these  lives  can  be 
substituted  for  another.  No  one  of  us 
finite  beings  can  take  another's  place. 
And  all  this  is  true  just  because  the  Uni- 
verse is  one  significant  whole. 

That  follows  from  our  general  doctrine 
concerning  our  unique  relation,  as  various 
finite  expressions  taking  place  within  the 
single  whole  of  the  divine  life.  But  now, 
with  this  result  in  mind,  let  us  return  again 
to  the  finite  realms,  and  descend  from  our 
glimpse  of  the  divine  life  to  the  dim  shad- 
ows and  to  the  wilderness  of  this  world, 
and  ask  afresh  :  But  what  is  the  unique 
meaning  of  my  life  just  now }  What  place 
do  I  fill  in  God's  world  that  nobody  else 
either  fills  or  can  fill  ? 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       yi 

How  disheartening  in  one  sense  is  still 
the  inevitable  answer.  I  state  that  answer 
again  in  all  its  negative  harshness.  I  reply 
simply  :  For  myself,  I  do  not  now  know  in 
any  concrete  human  terms  wherein  my 
individuality  consists.  In  my  present 
human  form  of  consciousness  I  simply  can- 
not tell.  If  I  look  to  see  what  I  ever  did 
that,  for  all  I  now  know,  some  other  man 
might  not  have  done,  I  am  utterly  unable 
to  discover  the  certainly  unique  deed. 
When  I  was  a  child  I  learned  by  imitation 
as  the  rest  did.  I  have  gone  on  copying 
models  in  my  poor  way  ever  since.  I 
never  felt  a  feeling  that  I  knew  or  could 
know  to  be  unlike  the  feelings  of  other 
people.  I  never  consciously  thought,  ex- 
cept after  patterns  that  the  world  or  my 
fellows  set  for  me.  Of  myself,  I  seem  in 
this  life  to  be  nothing  but  a  mere  meeting- 
place  in  this  stream  of  time  where  a  mass 
of  the  driftwood  from  the  ages  has  col- 
lected. I  only  know  that  I  have  always 
tried  to  be  myself  and  nobody  else.     This 


72        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

mere  aim  I  indeed  have  observed,  but  that 
is  all.  As  for  you,  my  beloved  friend,  I 
loyally  believe  in  your  uniqueness  ;  but 
whenever  I  try  to  tell  you  wherein  it  con- 
sists, I  helplessly  describe  only  a  type. 
That  type  may  be  uncommon.  But  it  is 
not  you.  For  as  soon  as  described,  it 
might  have  other  examples.  But  you  are 
alone.  Yet  I  never  tell  what  you  are. 
And  if  your  face  lights  up  my  world  as  no 
other  can  —  well,  this  feeling  too,  when 
viewed  as  the  mere  psychologist  has  to  view 
it,  appears  to  be  simply  what  all  the  other 
friends  report  about  their  friends.  It  is  an 
old  story,  this  life  of  ours.  There  is  no- 
thing new  under  our  sun.  Nothing  new, 
that  is,  for  us,  as  we  now  feel  and  think. 
When  we  imagine  that  we  have  seen  or 
defined  uniqueness  and  novelty,  we  soon 
feel  a  little  later  the  illusion.  We  live 
thus,  in  one  sense,  so  lonesomely  here. 
For  we  love  individuals  ;  we  trust  in  them  ; 
we  honor  and  pursue  them ;  we  glorify 
them  and  hope  to  know  them.     But  after 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       7^ 

we  have  once  become  keenly  critical  and 
worldly  wise,  we  know,  if  we  are  sufficiently 
thoughtful,  that  we  men  can  never  either 
find  them  with  our  eyes,  or  define  them  in 
our  minds  ;  and  that  hopelessness  of  finding 
what  we  most  love  makes  some  of  us  cyni- 
cal, and  turns  others  of  us  into  lovers  of 
barren  abstractions,  and  renders  still  others 
of  us  slaves  to  monotonous  affairs  that 
have  lost  for  us  the  true  individual  mean- 
ing and  novelty  that  we  had  hoped  to  find 
in  them.  Ah,  one  of  the  deepest  tragedies 
of  this  human  existence  of  ours  lies  in  this 
very  loneliness  of  the  awakened  critics  of 
life.  We  seek  true  individuality  and  the 
true  individuals.  But  we  find  them  not. 
For  lo,  we  mortals  see  what  our  poor 
eyes  can  see ;  and  they,  the  true  individ- 
uals, —  they  belong  not  to  this  world  of 
our  merely  human  sense  and  thought. 

They  belong  not  to  this  worldy  in  so  far 
as  our  sense  and  our  thought  now  show  us 
this  world !  Ah,  therein,  —  just  therein  lies 
the  very  proof  that  they  even  now  belong 


y4       77;^  Conception  of  Immortality 

to  a  higher  and  to  a  richer  realm  than  ours.  ^ 
Herein  lies  the  very  sign  of  their  true  im- 
mortality. For  they  are  indeed  real,  these 
individuals.  We  know  this,  first,  because 
we  mean  them  and  seek  them.  We  know 
this,  secondly,  because,  in  this  very  longing 
of  ours,  God  too  longs ;  and  because  the 
Absolute  life  itself,  which  dwells  in  our 
life,  and  inspires  these  very  longings,  pos- 
sesses the  true  world,  and  is  that  world. 
For  the  Absolute,  as  we  now  know,  all  life 
is  individual,  but  is  individual  as  expressing 
a  meaning.  Precisely  what  is  unexpressed 
here,  then,  in  our  world  of  mortal  glimpses 
of  truth,  precisely  what  is  sought  and  longed 
for,  but  never  won  in  this  our  human  form 
of  consciousness,  just  that  is  interpreted, 
is  developed  into  its  true  wholeness,  is  won 
in  its  fitting  form,  and  is  expressed,  in  all 
the  rich  variety  of  individual  meaning  that 
love  here  seeks,  but  cannot  find,  and  is 
expressed  too  as  a  portion,  unique,  con- 
scious, and  individual,  of  an  Absolute  Life 
that  even  now  pulsates  in  every  one  of  our 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       y^ 

desires  for  the  ideal  and  for  the  individual. 
We  all  even  now  really  dwell  in  this  realm 
of  a  reality  that  is  not  visible, to  human 
eyes.  We  dwell  there  as  individuals.  The 
oneness  of  the  Absolute  Will  lives  in  and 
through  all  this  variety  of  life  and  love  and 
longing  that  now  is  ours,  but  cannot  live 
in  and  through  all  without  working  out  to 
the  full  precisely  that  individuality  of  pur- 
pose, that  will  to  choose  and  to  love  the 
unique,  which  is  in  all  of  us  the  deepest 
expression  of  the  ideal.  Just  because,  then, 
God  is  One,  all  our  lives  have  various  and 
unique  places  in  the  harmony  of  the  divine 
life.  And  just  because  God  attains  and 
wins  and  finds  this  uniqueness,  all  our  lives 
win  in  our  union  with  him  the  individu- 
ality which  is  essential  to  their  true  mean- 
ing. And  just  because  individuals  whose 
lives  have  uniqueness  of  meaning  are  here 
only  objects  of  pursuit,  the  attainment  of 
this  very  individuality,  since  it  is  indeed 
real,  occurs  not  in  our  present  form  of  con- 
sciousness, but  in  a  life  that  now  we  see 


7<5        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

not,  yet  in  a  life  whose  genuine  meaning 
is  continuous  with  our  own  human  life, 
however  far  from  our  present  flickering 
form  of  disappointed  human  consciousness 
that  life  of  the  final  individuality  may  be. 
Of  this  our  true  individual  life,  our  present 
life  is  a  glimpse,  a  fragment,  a  hint,  and 
in  its  best  moments  a  visible  beginning. 
That  this  individual  life  of  all  of  us  is  not 
something  limited  in  its  temporal  expres- 
sion to  the  life  that  now  we  experience,  fol- 
lows from  the  very  fact  that  here  nothing 
final  or  individual  is  found  expressed. 


VII 


HAVE  had  time  thus  only  to  hint 
at  what  to  my  mind  is  the  true 
basis  of  a  rational  conception  of 
Immortality.  I  do  not  wish  to  have  the 
concrete  definiteness  of  the  prophecies 
which  can  be  based  upon  this  conception 
in  the  least  overrated.  Individuality  we 
mean  and  seek.  That,  in  God,  we  win 
and  consciously  win,  and  in  a  life  that  is 
not  this  present  mortal  life.  But  we  also 
seek  pleasure,  riches,  joys.  Those,  so  far 
as  they  are  mere  types  of  facts,  we  as  indi- 
viduals have  no  right  to  expect  to  win, 
either  here  or  elsewhere,  in  the  form  in 
which  we  now  seek  them.  How,  when, 
where,  in  what  particular  higher  form  of 
finite  consciousness  our  various  individual 
meanings  get  their  final  and  unique  expres- 
sion, I  also  in  no  wise  pretend  to  know  or 


V. 


y8        The  Conception  of  Immortality 

to  guess.  The  confidence  of  the  student 
of  philosophy  when  he  speaks  of  the  Abso- 
lute, arouses  a  curiously  false  impression 
in  some  minds  that  he  supposes  himself 
able  to  pierce  further  into  all  the  other 
mysteries  of  the  world  than  others  do.  But 
that  is  a  mistake.  I  have  had  no  time  here 
to  give  even  to  my  argument  for  my  con- 
ception of  the  Absolute  any  sort  of  exact 
statement  or  defense.  I  well  know  how 
vague  my  hints  of  general  idealism  have 
been.  I  can  only  say  that  for  that  aspect 
of  my  argument  I  have  tried  to  give,  in  a 
proper  place,  a  fitting  defense. 

The  case,  however,  for  the  present  appli- 
cation of  my  argument  to  the  problem  of 
Human   Immortality  lies  simply  in  these 
, plain  considerations  :    (i)  The  world  is  a 
/  rational  whole,  a  life,  wherein  the  divine 
i  Will  is  uniquely  expressed.     (2)  Every  as- 
pect of  the  Absolute  Life  must  therefore 
/be    unique   with    the    uniqueness    of    the 
j  whole,  and  must  mean  something  that  can 
only  get  an  individual  expression.     (3)  But 


The  Conception  of  Immortality       yg 

in  this  present  life,  while  we  constantly 
intend  and  mean  to  be  and  to  love  and 
know  individuals,  there  are,  for  our  pre- 
sent form  of  consciousness,  no  true  indivi- 
duals to  be  found  or  expressed  with  the 
conscious  materials  now  at  our  disposal. 
(4)  Yet  our  life,  by  virtue  of  its  unity  with) 
the  Divine  Life,  must  receive  in  the  end  a/  ' 
genuinely  individual  and  significant  expres- 
sion. (5)  We  men,  therefore,  to  ourselves, 
as  we  feel  our  own  strivings  within  us,  and 
to  one  another  as  we  strive  to  find  one 
another,  and  to  express  ourselves  to  one 
another,  are  hints  of  a  real  and  various 
individuality  that  is  not  now  revealed  to 
us,  and  that  cannot  be  revealed  in  any  life 
which  merely  assumes  our  present  form  of 
consciousness,  or  which  is  limited  by  what 
we  observe  between  our  birth  and  death.  , 
(6)  And  so,  finally,  the  various  and  genu- 
ine individuality  which  we  are  now  loyally 
meaning  to  express  gets,  from  the  Abso- 
lute point  of  view,  its  final  and  conscious 
expression  in  a  life  that,  like  all  life  such 
as  Idealism  recognizes,  is  conscious,  and 


8o       The  Conception  of  Immortality 

that  in  its  meaning,  although  not  at  all 
necessarily  in  time  or  in  space,  is  contin- 
uous with  the  fragmentary  and  flickering 
existence  wherein  we  now  see  through  a 
glass  darkly  our  relations  to  God  and  to 
the  final  truth. 

I  know  not  in  the  least,  I  pretend  not  to 
guess,  by  what  processes  this  individuality 
of  our  human  life  is  further  expressed, 
whether  through  many  tribulations  as  here, 
or  whether  by  a  more  direct  road  to  indi- 
vidual fulfillment  and  peace.  I  know  only 
that  our  various  meanings,  through  what- 
ever vicissitudes  of  fortune,  consciously 
come  to  what  we  individually,  and  God  in 
whom  alone  we  are  individuals,  shall  to- 
gether regard  as  the  attainment  of  our 
unique  place,  and  of  our  true  relationships 
both  to  other  individuals  and  to  the  all  in- 
clusive Individual,  God  himself.  Further 
into  the  occult  it  is  not  the  business  of 
philosophy  to  go.  My  nearest  friends  are 
already,  as  we  have  seen,  occult  enough  for 
me.  I  wait  until  this  mortal  shall  put  on 
—  Individuality. 


NOTES 


Note  i,  Page  5. 

The  discussion  of  the  problem  of  individuality  in 
this  lecture  summarizes  views  that  I  have  attempted 
to  state  and  to  defend  at  length  in  two  places,  viz., 
in  the  volume  called  The  Conception  of  God  (a 
discussion  in  which  I  took  part  with  Prof.  George 
H.  Howison,  Prof.  Joseph  LeConte,  and  Prof.  Sid- 
ney E.  Mezes :  New  York,  The  Macmillan  Com- 
pany, 1 897 ;  in  particular,  in  the  Supplementary 
Essay ^  op.  cit.^  pp.  217-326);  and  in  the  First 
Series  of  my  Gifford  Lectures  before  the  Univer- 
sity of  Aberdeen  {The  World  and  the  Individual, 
First  Series :  The  Fotir  Co7iceptions  of  Being; 
especially  in  lectures  VII  and  X).  The  last  men- 
tioned volume  is  published  by  the  Macmillan  Com- 
pany (1900). 

Note  2,  Page  21. 

See  Aristotle's  Physics^  I,  i.  Aristotle  mentions 
in  this  passage  the  language  of  children  as  illus- 
trating his  view. 


82  Notes 

Note  3,  Page  33. 
The  technical  justification  for  this  assertion  is 
only  hinted  later  in  the  course  of  the  present  dis- 
course, but  is  set  forth  at  length  in  the  discussions 
cited  in  Note  i.     T/ie  individtial  is  essentially  the 
object  of  an  exclusive  interest :  this  is  the  thesis  of 
the  Supplementary  Essay  in  The  Conception  of  God. 
All  coinpletely  real  Being  is  individual  by  virtue 
of  the  fact  that  it  is  a  finally  determinate  expres- 
sion of  a  purpose:  this  is  the  doctrine  defended  in 
the  Gifford  Lectures  {loc.  cit.).     The  problem  of 
the  lover  is,  therefore,  to  my  mind,  as  technically 
metaphysical  a  problem  as  is  that  of  any  theologian. 
His  "  exclusive  interest "  is  a  typical  instance  of  the 
true  principle  of  individuation. 

Note  4,  Page  39. 

In  this  and  in  one  or  two  other  passages  of  the 
lecture  the  relation  of  the  problem  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  the  concept  of  the  actual  or  completed 
Infinite  is  indicated.  This  aspect  of  the  problem, 
involving  as  it  does  both  mathematical  and  meta- 
physical issues,  has  received  a  somewhat  detailed 
discussion  in  a  Suppleme7itary  Essay  published 
along  with  the  first  series  of  the  Gifford  Lectures, 
and  entitled  The  One,  the  Ma?iy,  a?id  the  Infinite. 

It  is  in  this   connection  that  my  own  way  of 


Notes  8^ 

stating  the  problem  of  individuality  brings  me  into 
decided  opposition  to  some  well-known  views,  both 
of  Fichte  and  of  Hegel,  regarding  the  nature  of 
individuality  and  regarding  the  concept  of  the 
Infinite.  An  "  elusive  goal "  the  individual  indeed 
is  for  any  temporal  search.  Yet  that  in  itself  it  is 
(in  one  sense,  and  that  the  most  real  sense)  a  com- 
pleted whole,  and  not  a  merely  unfinished  process, 
is  a  central  thesis  of  my  whole  argument.  On  the 
other  hand,  my  concept  of  the  completed  Infinite 
is  aot  that  of  Hegel,  but  rather  that  of  Dedekind 
and  Cantor. 

Note  5,  Page  50. 
The  more  general  statement  of  Idealism  which 
follows,  apart  from  its  application  to  the  case  of 
the  individual,  is  identical  in  substance  with  the 
argument  set  forth  in  my  Religious  Aspect  of  Phi- 
losophy (Boston,  Riverside  Press,  1885),  ^^^^  in  my 
Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy  (Id.  1892).  In  the 
Gifford  Lectures  the  relation  of  the  concept  of 
Reality,  as  defined  by  Idealism,  to  the  conceptions 
of  Will  and  of  Purpose,  is  more  carefully  consid- 
ered than  in  the  earlier  discussions,  and  an  attempt 
is  made  to  show  the  precise  grounds  for  the  fail- 
ure of  the  opposing  conceptions  of  Being,  e.  g.. 
Realism. 


84  Notes 

Note  6,  Page  65. 

The  text  here  implies  a  doctrine  about  the  mean- 
ing of  that  much-abused  term,  Eternity.  In  the 
forthcoming  second  course  of  Gifford  Lectures, 
already  delivered  but  not  yet  printed,  I  have  found 
the  opportunity  to  state  at  length  this  doctrine, 
which  is  not  new,  but  which  has  been  far  too  much 
neglected  in  philosophical  discussion.  The  gist  of 
the  matter  may  here  be  summed  up  in  a  few  words. 
Whoever  listens  appreciatively  to  a  melody,  or  to 
a  sequence  of  chords  of  music,  or  even  to  a  mere 
rhythm  of  drum-taps,  or  to  the  words  of  a  speaker, 
has  a  twofold  consciousness  as  to  the  way  in  which 
the  facts  to  which  he  listens  are  present  to  him. 
(i)  £ac/i  tone,  or  chord,  or  drum-tap,  or  spoken 
word,  \%  presetit^  as  this  member  of  its  series,  in  so 
far  as  it  follows  some  sounds  and  precedes  others, 
so  that  when,  or  in  so  far  as,  in  this  sense,  it  is 
present,  the  preceding  notes  of  the  melody  or  taps 
of  the  rhythm  are  no  longer  or  are  past,  while 
the  succeeding  notes  are  not  yet  or  are  future.  In 
this  sense  of  the  term  present,  the  present  excludes 
past  and  future  from  its  own  temporal  place  in  the 
sequence.  (2)  But  now  the  appreciative  listener 
also  grasps  at  once  (or,  as  a  totum  simul,  to  use 
the  phrase  of  St.  Thomas)  the  whole  of  a  brief  but 
still  considerable  sequence  of  tones  or  of  taps  or 


Notes  ^^ 

of  words.  In  this  second  sense  he  may  be  said  to 
find  present  to  him  the  whole  sequence.  How 
much  he  can  thus  grasp  at  07ice  depends  upon  his 
interest,  his  temperament,  and  his  training,  but 
above  all  upon  the  characteristic  time-span  of 
human  consciousness,  or  upon  the  length  of  what 
Professor  James  has,  with  others,  called  the  "  spe- 
cious present."  This  length  is,  for  us  men,  an 
arbitrary  fact,  varying  more  or  less,  but  within  close 
limits.  It  determines  one  aspect  of  what  I  have 
called  the  peculiar  "  form  "  of  our  human  conscious- 
ness. What  happens  in  periods  too  long  or  too 
short  for  this  time-span  of  our  consciousness  es- 
capes our  direct  observation.  There  is,  however, 
no  conceptual  difficulty  in  the  way  of  imagining  a 
*'form  of  consciousness"  whose  "specious  pre- 
sent" should  be  limited  in  span  to  the  time  of 
vibration  of  a  hydrogen  molecule,  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  should  be  extended  to  include  in  one  glance, 
or  at  once,  the  events  of  a  billion  years.  Such 
other  forms  of  consciousness  would  be  in  no  more 
arbitrary  relations  to  time  than  our  own  conscious- 
ness now  is.  How  we  come  to  be  able  to  grasp  at 
once  the  events  of  say  two  or  three  seconds,  we  can- 
not now  say.  That  we  can  do  so  is  evidenced  by 
every  case  in  which  we  catch,  as  a  presented  fact, 
the  interest  of  a  whole  musical  or  rhythmic  or 
spoken  phrase.  Other  forms  of  consciousness 
might  have  vastly  different  span. 


86  Notes 

But  in  so  far  as  we  grasp  a^  once  a  whole  series 
of  facts,  however  long  or  however  short,  this  series 
is  present,  in  the  second  sense  of  the  term  present, 
to  the  consciousness  that  observes  it  as  in  any  way 
a  whole.  Yet  the  temporal  facts  which  make  up 
the  whole  sequence  follow  each  one  after  its  pre- 
decessors. Let  the  sequence  be  a,  b,  c.  Then,  in 
QMX first  sense  of  the  term prese7it,  when  3  is  present, 
a  is  no  lojiger^  and  c  is  not  yet.  And  this  fact  makes 
the  temporal  sequence  what  it  is.  But  in  the  second 
sense  of  the  term  present,  a,  b,  and  c^  despite  this 
perfectly  genuine  but  relative  difference  of  no 
longer  and  not  yet,  or  of  past  and  future^  are  all 
present  as  a  totwn  swiul  to  the  consciousness 
that  grasps  the  entire  sequence.  These  two  senses 
of  the  term  presejit  are  perfectly  distinguishable, 
and  they  involve  no  contradiction. 

Since,  however,  the  length  of  a  "  specious  pre- 
sent "  is  an  arbitrary  fact,  there  is  no  sort  of  con- 
tradiction in  supposing  a  "  form  of  consciousness  " 
for  which  the  events  of  the  Archaean  and  of  the  Silu- 
rian and  of  later  geological  periods  should  be  pre- 
sent at  ojice,  together  with  the  facts  of  to-day's  his- 
tory. Such  a  consciousness  would  merely  exceed, 
by  many  millions  of  years,  our  time-span  ;  but  what 
is  for  us  no  longer  would  be,  to  such  a  conscious- 
ness, in  our  second  sense  of  the  term  present,  a  fact 
of  its  own  present  consciousness.    (On  the  time- 


Notes  87 

span,  see  also  my  discussion  in  my  Studies  of  Good 
and  Evil,  published  by  Appleton  and  Company  in 
1898,  in  the  essay  entitled  Self -Consciousness, 
Social  Consciousness  and  Nature). 

If  all  limitations  of  time-span  are  to  be  conceived 
as  arbitrary,  the  question  whether  a  consciousness 
is  possible  which  should  have  present  to  it  at  07ice 
(in  our  second  sense  of  the  term  present)  the  whole 
of  tiine^  or  the  whole  of  what,  from  this  moment 
outwards,  we  now  view  as  antecedent  or  as  sequent 
to  this  moment,  becomes  simply  the  question,  In 
what  sense  can  the  totality  of  temporal  events  be 
regarded  as  any  determinate  whole  at  all  ?  This 
question  involves,  to  be  sure,  the  further  questions  : 
In  what  sense  is  the  temporal  seqiience  of  the 
world's  events  an  endless  sequence  or  an  infinite 
series  ?  and,  In  what  sense  can  this  temporal  se- 
ries, even  if  infinite,  be  defined  as  a  determinate  or 
as  a  really  complete  whole  ?  These  questions  lie 
far  beyond  the  limits  of  this  note.  But,  as  a  fact, 
in  the  above-cited  essay,  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
Gifford  Lectures,  on  The  One,  the  Many,  and  the 
Infi7iite,  I  have  endeavored  to  show  that  an  infinite 
series  can  be  a  perfectly  determinate  and  individ- 
ual whole,  every  member  of  which  could  conceiv- 
ably be  known  at  once  by  a  single  consciousness. 
For  reasons  that  will  be  explained  more  fully  in 
the  second  series  of  the  Gifford  Lectures,  but  that 


88  Notes 

are  already  indicated  in  the  first  series,  I  also  hold 
that  the  temporal  series  of  the  world's  events  con- 
stitutes such  a  whole,  infinite,  and  yet  present  at 
once  to  the  Absolute  (in  our  second  sense  of  the 
Xtxva  present). 

But  a  consciousness  whose  span  embraces  the 
whole  of  time  is  precisely  what  I  mean  by  the  term 
Eternal  Cotisciousness.  And  what  is  present  at 
once  to  such  a  consciousness,  viz.,  the  whole  of 
what  happens  in  time,  taken  together  with  all  the 
distinctions  of  past  and  of  future  that  hold  within 
the  series  of  temporal  events,  —  this  whole,  I  say, 
constitutes  Eternity.  It  is  in  these  senses  that  I 
here  use  these  two  terms. 

The  type  of  an  eternal  consciousness  we  ourselves 
empirically  possess  precisely  in  so  far  as  we  grasp 
at  once  the  sequent  events  of  any  melody  or  rhythm 
or  series  of  words.  This  our  possession  of  what 
may  be  called  the  eter7ial  type  of  consciousness  is 
limited  by  the  arbitrary  span  of  our  human  form  of 
consciousness.  To  conceive  this  limitation  abso- 
lutely removed,  without  any  confusion  resulting, ' 
implies,  to  be  sure,  the  conception  of  the  determi- 
nately  infinite  whole ;  but  this  conception,  although 
abstruse,  is  (as  I  have  tried  to  show  in  the  essay 
cited)  a  conception  quite  free  from  contradiction. 
If  once  we  form  this  conception,  then  it  becomes 
easy  to  see  that  to  suppose  the  whole  of  time 


Notes  8g 

present  at  once  to  an  eternal  consciousness  is  in 
no  wise  a  meaningless  supposition.  Nor  does  this 
supposition  conflict  with  the  temporal  truth  that  we 
also  express  when  we  say  that,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  any  one  present  event  in  time  (if  the  term 
present  is  taken  in  our  first  sense),  all  future  events 
are  not yet^  and  all  past  events  are  710  longer.  The 
two  propositions  express  different  aspects  of  the 
world,  but  are  mutually  consistent. 

It  is  in  view  of  these  considerations  that  the 
text  speaks  of  the  Absolute  as  possessing,  in  its 
conscious  fulfillment,  "  the  whole  world  of  past  and 
future."  If  one  retorts, ''  How  can  the  future  now 
i.  e.t  at  the  present  moment,  be  present  fact  to  the 
Absolute  when  the  future  is  not  yet  ?  "  then  I  simply 
insist  upon  distinguishing  the  two  foregoing  mean- 
ings of  the  word  "  present."  It  is  as  if  one  asked, 
"  How  can  the  listener  grasp  at  once  as  present  the 
whole  of  his  brief  musical  sequence,  if  the  tones 
or  chords  so  follow  in  time  that  all  but  one  are 
either  past  or  future,  and  are  not  present  when 
that  one  sounds?"  Whoever  listens  to  music 
with  appreciation  answers  the  latter  question.  The 
answer  to  the  former  involves  no  new  principle,  if 
once  you  grant  the  definable  reality  of  an  infinite 
time. 

The  usual  confusion  of  ideas  as  to  this  twofold 
way  in  which  the  facts  of  a  sequence  can  be  called 


po  Notes 

present  is  responsible  for  the  familiar  problem  as 
to  the  divine  "  foreknowledge  "  and  its  relation  to 
freedom.  "  If  God  has  the  future  present  to  him, 
then  he  must  now  (viz.,  to-day,  or  at  this  temporal 
instant)  y27r^know  the  future."  So  a  frequently 
urged  argument  presupposes.  The  only  fair  com- 
ment is :  God,  viewed  in  his  wholeness,  does  not  now 
foreknow  anything,  if  by  now  you  mean  merely  to- 
day or  at  this  moment.  For  whoever  now  looks 
forward  to  the  future  merely  as  not  yet,  is  a  finite 
being,  temporally  determined,  and  not  yet  come  to 
his  own  fulfillment  in  God.  Divine  knowledge  of 
what  to  us  is  future  is  no  mere  foreknowledge.  It 
is  eternal  knowledge. 

Note  7,  Page  67. 
I  am  well  aware  of  the  difficulty  that  this  pas- 
sage leaves  wholly  untouched  regarding  the  sense 
in  which  there  can  be  any  freedom,  any  individual 
initiative,  any  ethical  spontaneity,  belonging  to  the 
individuals  whose  variety  and  uniqueness,  despite, 
or  even  because  of,  their  unity  with  and  in  God,  is 
here  asserted.  The  problem  of  individual  freedom 
I  have  treated  in  the  Conception  of  God  (pp.  289- 
315),  and  in  Lecture  X  of  the  first  series  of  Gifford 
Lectures.  See  also  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philo- 
sophy^ pp.  428-434.  Fuller  discussions  of  the 
same  problem,  already  prepared  in  manuscript,  will 


Notes  gi 

appear  in  the  second  series  of  Gilford  Lectures.  I 
can  only  say  that  the  figure  of  the  cathedral  is  used 
in  the  text  with  a  full  consciousness  of  its  inade- 
quacy. The  world  is  no  cathedral,  but  a  life  of 
many  lives.  Nor  are  the  true  individuals  mere 
stones  or  carvings  in  an  edifice,  nor  yet  mere  parts 
in  a  quantitative  whole.  In  God  their  lives  inter- 
penetrate without  losing  their  contrasts,  and  are 
free  despite  their  oneness.  Their  freedom  involves 
the  fact  that  the  future  temporal  processes  of  the 
world  have  a  certain  measure  of  causal  indetermi- 
nateness,  despite  that  other,  or  ontological  deter- 
minateness,  that,  as  individual  events,  they  possess ; 
and  that  every,  temporal  instant  brings  its  own 
novelties  with  it.  The  completeness  of  their  lives 
is  a  fact  only  from  the  eternal  point  of  view.  But 
a  lecture  on  immortality  is  limited  to  the  mere 
aspect  of  life  and  truth  suggested  by  its  title.  It 
cannot  justly  express  a  system  of  metaphysics. 
It  can  only  hint  the  nature  of  such  a  system. 


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